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Through The Lens Of Heinz Kohut

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Recommended: Similarities between object relations theory and Freudian theory

Lets look at my background through the lens of Heinz Kohut. Here is what Cooper and Randall say in their book on Kohut, “For Kohut, a healthy self is an enthusiastic self on its way to fulfilling its transformed form of grandiosity.” He would say I have a pour assembly of object relations. An internal object is a piece of mental structure that is formed from a person’s experiences with important caregivers in life. Freud originally brought the word ‘Object’ in to the conversation of psychoanalytic theory. Later theorist Fairbairn and Klein would also work along these same lines using Object. Freud’s object could be anything; a person’s object could be a ball, a truck, an animal or a caregiver. Melanie Klein never considered her theories …show more content…

Fairbairn felt, “drives are object seeking, not pleasure seeking.” (Cooper/Randall/ page 79. object seeking meaning the primary aim of the libido was relationship seeking; whereas Freud felt the libido was pleasure seeking. Object constancy is necessary for an infant’s psychological development but if the object constancy is unhealthy or abusive then the child will internalize that object as well. Once the abusive object is internalized the child/adult is unable to sooth but instead takes on the negative ideas and experiences from the past. When the object is a negative force then a negative sense of self, low self-esteem occurs and a general unhealthy pathology encompasses the child/adult based on the historical object relations. In my particular case my object constancy was mixed with love and abuse. For many years I suffered from low self-esteem, with a general ‘unsafe’ experience of the world. Authority figures have been an aversion of mine all my life. Someone having power over me has been almost unbearable; in fact, I have managed my life around the avoidance of such interactions. Many times, my fear of my object relations moved me from job to job state to state and for a while even country to country. ‘Over there’, was always safer. When I became stressed I was unable to self-sooth and only moving far away could restore my sense of well-being, but that sense of well being never lasted long.

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