The nomenclature is curious and misleading. The theory is a protest against psychological theories that claim that crucial matters of personality formation are internal to the person. Object-relations theory maintains instead that they are relational and external. “Object relations” means that the person must be related to real, objective others who are not a projection but are unyielding centers of power and will. For the very young child, one such objective other is, of course, the mother. For
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