Developmental Considerations in the Origins of Object Relations: Implications for Normative Development and Clinical Practice.

While previous writers have considered the possibility of pre-object phases of psychic development, their offerings have tended to focus on its conceptualization and implications for psychopathology and psychoanalytic care. The purpose of this paper is to extend some of these ideas by proposing a developmental model that includes a pre-object phase of normal psychic development within an object relations framework and by discussing how this model might further inform our understanding of psychopathology associated with early development and its analytic treatment.