Kernbergs Theory of Object Relations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Kernbergs Theory of Object Relations - Essay Example His theory delves on the principle that humans have an inborn drive to forge and maintain relationships. He asserts that this is the basic human need which shapes a framework in which libidinal and aggressive drives draw meaning. Based from his development model which contains three stages, he built around it the principles of internalization process, ego integration, drive development and borderline disorder development. Otto F. Kernberg was born in Vienna, Austria in 1928. In order to escape the Nazi, his family left Germany in 1939 and immigrated to Chile. There he studied biology, medicine, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Through a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, he was able to study research in psychotherapy at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States. After emigration to the U.S., he joined C.F. Menninger Memorial Hospital and became its director. He served as Supervising and Training Analyst at Topeca Institute for Psychoanalysis. In New York, he became director of the New York State Psychiatry Institute General Clinical Service. He was also a professor at the Columbia University and Cornell University. ... Strecker Award from IPH in 1975 and George E. Daniels Merit Award of the APM in 1981 (Cohen, 2000). Object Relations Theory One of Kernberg's more famous contributions is his Object Relations Theory. Object Relations Theory is a contemporary version of psychoanalytic theory which attributed less importance on the urges of aggression and sexuality as driving forces and more weight on human interactions as the major motivational force in life. Object relations theory proponents claim that humans are relationship-searching instead of pleasure-searching creatures as suggested by Sigmund Freud. The impact of this theory is the shift of focus from sexuality to relationship in connection to psychotherapy (Kernberg, 1984a). It started and gained its foundation with his construction of a Developmental Model. This model is based on the following developmental tasks needed to be completed to become healthy. These are divided into three major categories (Cohen, 2000). The first are the early months of an infant where it struggles to sort out his experiences and categorizing them as either pleasurable or not without making a distinction of self and other (Consolini, 1999). Next is the first fundamental task of psychic elucidation of self and other which involves distinguishing one's experience and other's experiences as apart and different. Psychotic states are hypothesized to originate from this failure to delineate internal and external worlds (Kernberg, 1985). This is followed by the second developmental task of overcoming splitting where loving images equated as good and hateful images equated as bad are separated. Failure to accomplish this task invariably results to borderline problems (Kernberg, 1984a). The developmental