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. Thinkers of the school maintain that the infant's relationship with the mother primarily determines the formation of its personality in adult life. Particularly, attachment is the bedrock of the development of the self or the psychic organization that creates the sense of identity.
While its groundwork derives from theories of development of the ego in Freudian psychodynamics, object relations theory does not place emphasis on the role of biological drives in the formation of personality in adulthood. Thinkers of the school instead suggest that the way people relate to others and situations in their adult lives is shaped by family experiences during infancy; an adult who experienced neglect or abuse in infancy expects similar behavior from others who, through transference, remind them of the neglectful or abusive parent from their past. These patterns of the behavior of people become repeated images of the events, and eventually turn into objects in the unconscious that the self carries into adulthood to be used in the unconscious to predict people's behavior in their social relationships and interactions.
The first "object" in an individual is usually an internalized image of the mother. Internal objects are formed by the patterns in one's experience of being taken care of as a baby, which may or may not be accurate representations of the actual, external caretakers. Objects are usually internalized images of one's mother, father, or primary caregiver, although they could also consist of parts of a person such as an infant relating to the breast or things in one's inner world (one's internalized image of others).
Later experiences can reshape these early patterns, but objects often continue to exert a strong influence throughout life.
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Ego psychology is a school of psychoanalysis rooted in Sigmund Freud's structural id-ego-superego model of the mind. An individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces. Many psychoanalysts use a theoretical construct called the ego to explain how that is done through various ego functions. Adherents of ego psychology focus on the ego's normal and pathological development, its management of libidinal and aggressive impulses, and its adaptation to reality.
Free association is the expression (as by speaking or writing) of the content of consciousness without censorship as an aid in gaining access to unconscious processes. The technique is used in psychoanalysis (and also in psychodynamic theory) which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud out of the hypnotic method of his mentor and colleague, Josef Breuer. Freud described it as such: "The importance of free association is that the patients spoke for themselves, rather than repeating the ideas of the analyst; they work through their own material, rather than parroting another's suggestions".
In psychoanalytic theory, a defence mechanism (American English: defense mechanism) is an unconscious psychological operation that functions to protect a person from anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings related to internal conflicts and outer stressors. Defence mechanisms (Abwehrmechanismen) are unconscious psychological processes employed to defend against feelings of anxiety and unacceptable impulses at the level of consciousness.
Visual features are spatiotemporally integrated along motion trajectories. For instance, when a central line is followed by pairs of flanking lines, two motion streams diverging from the center are perceived. The central line is rendered unconscious by the ...
2021
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We examined the effect of grouping processes on the Ebbinghaus illusion by manipulating objecthood: the degree to which an object is perceived as a cohesive entity. We presented observers with squares as targets and inducers and manipulated the degree of t ...
2018
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Humans have an incredible capacity to learn properties of objects by pure tactile exploration with their two hands. With robots moving into human-centred environment, tactile exploration becomes more and more important as vision may be occluded easily by o ...