Margaret Mahler’s Object Relations Theory
Margaret Mahler developed her own theory of object relations, based on the role of separation and individuation in child development.
Object Relations Theory is a psychodynamic model of development that emphasizes the importance of interaction with the environment. According to this concept, it is the child’s relationships with the “objects” of his environment that determine his subsequent functionality.
Mahler and her colleagues studied normal infants and normal mothers in a natural playroom setting, observing the emergence of object relations in the first three years of life.
She became involved in this research after working with infants and young children with profound mental disorders; Therefore, by studying normal children, she sought to discover, on the one hand, what contributes to the formation of intrapsychic structures that ultimately allow the child to function independently of the object, and on the other, what contributes to the pathology of these structures.
Stages of development of object relations
Data obtained from the study led Mahler to view the stages of development in terms of what she called the separation-individuation process. In this process, which became the foundation of Mahler’s theory of the development of object relations, two different but…
