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Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between external people, as well as internal images and the relations found in them. [ 1 ]
In the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, objet petit a (French for "object little a") stands for the unattainable object of desire, the "a" being the small other ("autre"), a projection or reflection of the ego made to symbolise otherness, like a specular image, as opposed to the big Other (always capitalised as "A") which represents otherness itself.
Identity diffusion results from pathological object relations and involves contradictory character traits, discontinuity of self and either very idealized or devalued object relations. Defense operations often applied by BPO patients are splitting, denial, projective identification, primitive devaluation / idealization and omnipotence. Reality ...
The concept was also taken up in object relations theory, which particularly explored "how a patient sometimes places the analyst in the role of victim whilst the patient acts out an identification with the aggressor" [18] in the analytic situation.
The drives are the partial manifestations of a single force called desire. [13] Lacan's concept of "objet petit a" is the object of desire, although this object is not that towards which desire tends, but rather the cause of desire. Desire is not a relation to an object but a relation to a lack .
Lacan identifies four partial drives: the oral drive (the erogenous zones are the lips (the partial object the breast—the verb is "to suck"), the anal drive (the anus and the faeces, "to shit"), the scopic drive (the eyes and the gaze, "to see") and the invocatory drive (the ears and the voice, "to hear").
The fundamental position of Object Relations Theory is that for every developing self there has to be a object to whom it relates, thus every pair of structures contains a version of self paired with a version of the object (other person) to whom the self structure was relating.
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