A Model of Suicidal Behavior In Latency Age Children Based on Developmental Object Relations Theory

Abstract

This thesis attempts to explicate the manifestation of suicidal behavior in latency age children based on developmental object relations theory.It asserts that the susceptibility to suicidal behavior becomes part of the child's developing ego organization during the first three years of 1 i fe as the result of deviant or distorted what needs to be explained is not some factor which predisposes children to suicidal behavior but rather the reverse. Given that beliefs in the reversibility of death are common and that suicide is uncommon in childhood it cannot follow that one finding explains the other Cp. 97).Addressing these questions within the parameters of this study, this thesis asserts that children resort to suicide because their protective psychological mechanisms--ego defenses--fail them during periods of chronic stress or intense stress. This thesis is not a new one; it was stated by Schechter in 1957:"It is when the degree of tension is extremely high and the defense mechanisms break down or become ineffective that suicide or suicidal equivalents may appear" Cp. 132).The intention of this project is to explain how manifest suicidal behavior occurs using the approach of psychoanalytic developmental object relations theory. This thesis thus addresses aspects of ego-defensive functioning--that which protects from self-destructive actions and that which permits self-destructive actions. including the capacity for self-protection.In response, then, to the question why more latencyage children do not kill themselves, the thesis proposes In cell 4, Cowan places humanistic psychology with its emphasis on "innate inner forces pushing individuals toward self-actualization" with psychoanalytic psychology with its emphasis on "stage changes in the locus of pleasure driven by underlying biological development" (p. 13>.Adequate parenting ensures "development toward increased levels of adaptation" <p. 13).Cowan criticizes this cell because he holds that "external forces do interfere with the child's development,"and these theories consider events as "distal causes of It is during infancy that potentials may be observed for a balance of active and passive aims, qualities of object relations and of beginning ·identifications, function pleasures, or for the lack of these. The staying power of these potentials builds habitual ways of responding to inner and outer events that underlie health or illness. They reflect nascent character qualities <p. 582). • • • • In psychoanalytic parlance an object is a person other than the subject. But psychological life does not begin with perception of self and other.Even when perception begins, self and object i•ages are merged.Conte•porary ego psychology describes the first three years of life as a dyadic experience during which the merged images separate out gradually into more or less distinct and stable self and object representations. This suggests that even the ter• object relations theory is somewhat of a •isnomer; it should be self and obiect relations theory. This would re...