ABSTRACT
As summarized in Table 8.1, you can expect to nd object relations decits when you witness, in the clinical situation, problems with some or all of the following elements of relating to others.
Warmth. Most people experience pleasure in making human contact. Pleasurable interactions, accompanied by smiling, are common, routine experiences. However, people with object relations disturbance can react with coldness or a lack of responsiveness to warm human contact. ey may be suering with a deciency caused by perpetuation of what Mahler1 and her group call “low-keyedness.” Because cold people also may be using isolation of affect and rigid rules, they are oen confused diagnostically with warm, neurotic obsessive-compulsives who use the same defenses.2
