« The purpose of this research is to examine object relations theory according to Cashdan. The plan of the research will be to set forth principal concepts informing the theory and then to examine the role of the object-relations therapist in regard to the various stages of the therapeutic relationship.
Object-relations theory deals with the structure and form that the psychotherapeutic process takes. Object-relations theory, which has many different emphases, is above all to be understood as "a reaction against the Freudian motivational concept of instinctual drives" (23) and in favor of an understanding of the complex relationships the govern human experience and behavior, particularly early childhood relationships. In this theory, the relationships that the self has with a whole range of others constitute the sense of selfhood that the individual has (27-8). This theory is consistent with Freudian approaches inasmuch as it is based on psychoanalysis. However, it departs from Freud inasmuch as it does not focus on oedipal relationships but rather "preoedipal" ones--or in other words not on the individual's relationship with a father but rather (usually) with a mother.
The object-relations therapist approaches patient anxiety as arising from a feeling of impending loss of the connection or relationship between the self and the various objects of psychological relationship. As the individual develops, the constancy of relations is interrupted by what is termed splitting, or the separation or differentiation of the self from the "other" that results in the formation of the self. There are four main phases of splitting, which may be either good or bad: maternal splitting, imaginal splitting, self-splitting, and identity splits. Cashdan summarizes the phases by referring to the "goodness-badness" split of the first three phases as the split "is transformed from an experience of the mother 'out there' to an experience of the self. T...