What Object Relations Theory tells us about how our early childhood experiences shape our lives and relationships

Have you ever wondered why you always tend to date the same type of person? Or why you always end up having the same argument about the exact same topic again and again with your partner? Or why you are always concerned about what others think of you, even if they are close friends who reassure you and treat you with kindness? These repeating patterns in relational life are a common occurrence, and many therapists and psychoanalysts believe that the reason for these patterns is hidden in our childhood experiences. Object Relations Theory, a psychoanalytic theory developed in the mid 1900s by various psychoanalysts including Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott, outlines the way that individuals absorb their early childhood experiences and have a way of repeating, or being affected by these early experiences much later in their life as adults.

Object Relations Theory states that the way in which we relate to the earliest “objects” in our life; our parents, our caretakers, our childhood friends, is internalized and then repeated throughout the remainder of our lives through our relationships with other people. Object Relations Theory claims that the interpersonal territory of our lives is organized by several guiding templates that we internalize at a young age and then consciously and unconsciously replay throughout our lives. Teri Quatman in “Essential Psychodynamic Psychotherapy” writes that “We tend toward what is familiar to us; we tend to dance steps we have learned and practiced over time” (p. 100). That is to say, the way we learn to relate from a very young age becomes ingrained in our psyches, and informs our interpersonal relationships throughout the rest of our lives.

Let's say that your father was supportive but emotionally distant in your early life. We must remember that this is one of the first interpersonal interactions you are experiencing in your life, and therefore you have no other way of relating to compare it to. To you, as a young child, the way you experience your father’s emotional coldness is just the way that older authoritative men interact with you. You have no other models of interpersonal interaction to compare this to, and no reason to question or critique this way of interacting. As a very young child, these early interpersonal experiences shape the general landscape of your socially interactive self, and therefore you internalize this way of interacting as the only normal way to be in a relationship. Further, you unconsciously will feel comfortable in relationships with this same dynamic. Without even realizing what you are doing, you will feel comfortable with a certain interpersonal dance, and because you learned it at such a young age it will feel like the only dance there is.

Object Relations Theory has specific names for these types of interactions. ORT states that in this early relationship with your father, you create an internal representation of your father, an object to which you relate in a certain way. ORT states that even after the real flesh and blood father of yours no longer relates to you in the same way, or dies, or changes his interpersonal approach, you still have an internalized representation of him which you interact with every time you meet an older authoritative man who fits the same personality characteristics as your father. At critical developmental times in your early childhood you are collecting scores of these internalized objects based on your early interactions with caregivers and friends, and these objects come to shape and inform the patterns of behavior that are available to you in interacting with new people. It is as if you are confined to relating to new people in a pre-limited set of ways, determined by the number and nature of your early caregiver objects which you have internalized.

To take Object Relations Theory a step further, Quatman goes on to state that not only do we internalize the way in which we were treated by our early caregivers, but rather “we internalize both sides of the emotional interaction in a way we don’t really do as adults” (p. 107). In the case of the emotionally cold father, as a young child you would not just internalize the object of a distant father figure; you would internalize the entire interpersonal landscape of the situation. What this means is that later in life this internalized father-interaction object could influence your relational skills in a number of ways. You could harken back to the small child yearning for his father’s affection, and seek out older men to mentor you who are similarly distant. Or, the internalized object of this interaction could cause you to become the very emotionally cold and distant father figure to someone else. Further, you may come to believe that the dynamics of your father/son, older wise man/younger mentor child dyad from your early childhood is the standard or default way for fathers and sons to interact. You might unconsciously select to replay different aspects of the father/son pair, and because you have internalized the whole dyad, and not just your role in it, this internalized object can have a wide range of influences on your later life.

Quatman writes about the important difference between early interpersonal interactions and later adult ones by writing “as little people, we absorb experience rather than studying it” (p. 108). That is to say, we absorb our representations of these earliest interpersonal experiences without discrimination – we don’t yet have the critical reasoning skills to decide whether this is an acceptable interpersonal dynamic to internalize. It just happens to us, and then we wake up sometime later in middle adulthood in the midst of these mysterious interpersonal currents wondering why we always end up with a certain type of woman, or end up in certain types of arguments with our bosses, or always seem to treat our friends in a certain way. These influences are powerful, often hidden under layers of unconscious armor, and we have no real say in the matter of which objects we internalize.

Important to remember through all of this is that this whole process happens on an unconscious level. We do not intend to internalize certain object relation pairs in early childhood, and later in life, we have little to no control over how these internalized objects influence our interpersonal life. Perhaps the only freedom we do have in our predicament is the freedom to explore and learn and understand more about our relational landscape so we are not left in the dark as much. It is an interesting and often difficult process to wake up to these unconscious habits and patterns, and to realize that powerful shaping forces have been at work in our lives without even realizing it. Understanding, or insight into these dynamics in ourselves can provide some level of freedom of choice, we can see the relational patterns for what they are, just patterns, and begin to carve new grooves in the way we navigate life.

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