ABSTRACT
Chapter 3, ‘Interaction with an ‘emotionally available’ object’, is concerned with the first of the facilitators from Chapter 2: It outlines ideas about the development of the moral sense in the context of a relationship with a ‘good-enough’ object, usually the mother, as they have evolved through Kleinian thought and subsequently. Although there is a mainly Kleinian and post-Kleinian focus, relevant, illuminating insights are included from object-relations theory, from self-psychology and from the Independent tradition. The chapter also considers some of the consequences, when these processes go awry, for a subject’s relationships with other people, philosophies or religion.
