ABSTRACT
In his seminar The Object Relation, J. Lacan sets out to provide a critique of the prevalence in psychoanalysis of the object relations approach or theory which re-centred the analytic endeavour on the object. He puts forward that through this movement the object had become the prime theoretical element in analysis at the expense of sustaining the focus in psychoanalysis on the drive, desire and so on. As a rule the sexual drive then becomes auto-erotic, and not until the period of latency has been passed through is the original relation restored. There are good reasons why a child sucking at his mother's breast has become the prototype of every relation of love. In The Object Relation seminar Lacan makes reference to Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology in relation to this question of the lost object in Freud that he takes up.
