ABSTRACT
The concept of the object in psychoanalysis starts with Freud’s theory of drives, or instincts, which he described as having a source, an aim, and an object. Broadly speaking, the object was initially the person or the thing towards which the drive was directed; it could also be seen as the vehicle by which the drive is satisfied. Melanie Klein centred the psychoanalytical experience on the primitive relationship of the child with its mother’s breast, its experience of the breast being on the borderline between subjective fantasy and objective reality. For Klein, psychical objects start with objects, or parts of objects, which are part of this world and exist in reality. Lacan’s prototypical object, the object cause of desire, is not of this world: it is an imaginary construction. For Klein, internal objects are introjected aspects of real objects perceived physically and initially unrepresented, as language has no hold yet on the infant’s mind.
