ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the subject of object-relations theory as the gradual emergence to the forefront of the personal as against the impersonal, or natural science, element in Freud’s thought. This key to the whole process was recognized by Erik Erikson, when in 1955 he reviewed Freud’s letter to Wilhelm Fliess, published as The Origins of Psychoanalysis. Erikson commented on the emergence of “a radically new kind of intellectual process, specific for psychoanalytic work and thought.” Ego-psychology broadened considerably with the work of Harry Stack Sullivan, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Gara Thompson, without, however, reaching its full significance. Their work, however, prepared the ground for Erikson’s ego-identity studies. The social environment has its place in those relatively stable ways of relating that become built-in parts of the social cultural mores. His scheme states the basic ways in which an individual can relate to an external environment, particularly with respect to persons.
