Object Relations

Nilanjana Sanyal is a Senior psychoanalyst, practitioner, academic, and researcher in the field of Psychology. She is the Former President of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society. Her thrust areas include Psychoanalysis, Psychodynamic Psychotherapeutics, Positive Psychology, Spiritual Psychology, Gerontology, and Counselling. A Senior Academician, she has served as a full-tenured Professor at Calcutta University’s Department of Psychology, India, where she served twice as the Head of the Department, headed the Ph.D. committee as the Convener, delivered keynotes and master classes at the Academic Staff College and successfully guided 30 Ph.D. theses. She has a large portfolio of authored and edited books, book chapters, journal publications, editorial initiatives and conference papers. She is the co-creator of an International Assessment Standard. She has acted as a Specialist in her own field in various Apex Bodies, including the Fulbright Fellowship and the Commonwealth Selection Committees, the College Services Commission, the UPSC and State PSC selection boards, and acted as Chair at various international conferences across the globe. She has served as chief guest and specialist at various television, radio, and other media programmes. Manisha Dasgupta is a Professor and Former Head of the Department, University of Calcutta, India. She has active interests and engagement in Personality Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Projective Psychology, Art-Based Assessments, Qualitative Research Methods, Gerontology, and Clinical Psychology, and has many publications. She has been assisting Dr. Sanyal in many of her initiatives and, independently, has been delivering lectures, engaging in research, practising therapeutic interventions, and generally developing herself consistently as a complete, holistic mental health educator and professional under the guidance of her mentor as well as her own sustained initiatives. Co-creator of the Indian adaptation of an International Assessment Standard, she is trained in various test administrations, including the Fairy Tale Test (FTT), which she helped co-develop. She is also an Editorial Consultant and Reviewer of several international and national journals of repute.

• Preface Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Glossary 1. Object-relations in conceptual frame of mother-child dyad: A theoretical comprehension 2. Object relations theory: Melanie Klein’s perspective from matriarchy 3. Balint’s object-relational world: Ocnophil, philobat and creative dyads 4. Symbiosis and separation-individuation: Mahler’s views of object relations 5. Winnicott’s existential perspective of object-relations 6. Volatile trinity of Fairbairn: A new voice of object relations 7. Bion’s object-relational metatheory: A shift from positivism to psychospirituality and beyond 8. Attachment and dependency: Bowlby’s contention of object-relations from the ethological perspective 9. Analyzing flow of narcisisstic energies in self-psychological perspective: Kohut’s novelty along psychoanalytic directions 10. Ego psychological object relations model: Kernberg’s perspective of affect 11. Chodorow’s perspective on mothering: Feminist influence of gender and culture on object relations 12. Critical comparison among the selected object relations theories