Linked from

The 18 pages that link to Object relations theory, each with the reason it gives.

• Oedipus complexCompared with: It shifts emphasis from instinctual wishes toward early relationships and their internal representations.

• TransferenceRelated: It describes how internalized relationship patterns can be repeated with a therapist.

• Melanie KleinRelated: Klein’s influence helped make object relations a major alternative to drive-centered accounts.

• Identification (psychology)Related: It describes identification as incorporating aspects of significant others into internal self-and-other representations.

• Karen HorneyCompared with: It also shifts attention toward relationships, but developed as a distinct psychoanalytic tradition.

• Projection (psychology)Related: This tradition made interpersonal projection central to accounts of how people experience others.

• John BowlbyRelated: Its focus on early relationships overlapped with Bowlby’s account, despite different explanations.

• SuperegoCompared with: It explains internalized figures and conflict differently from Freud’s account of the superego.

• Psychodynamic psychotherapyRelated: It offers one account of how early relationships become enduring inner patterns.

• Donald WinnicottNarrower topic: Winnicott became a major British contributor to this tradition, emphasizing the infant’s dependence on caregiving.

• Ego psychologyCompared with: It foregrounds internal relationships, whereas ego psychology emphasizes functions and adaptation.

• Penis envyCompared with: It shifts attention from anatomical difference toward relationships as drivers of development.

• Psychoanalytic theoryRelated: It shifts emphasis from instinctual drives toward early relationships and their internal representations.

• Castration anxietyCompared with: Its developmental accounts emphasize early relationships rather than Freud’s genital-stage fear as the central mechanism.

• Harry Stack SullivanRelated: It shares Sullivan’s relational emphasis but focuses more on internal representations of relationships.

• Heinz KohutCompared with: Kohut’s focus on self-cohesion differs from object relations accounts centered on internal object relationships.

• Neo-FreudianismRelated: It shares an interpersonal focus but developed as a distinct theoretical tradition.

• PsychodynamicsBroader topic: It explains present experience through enduring inner representations of significant relationships.