Abstract
Abstract
Object relations theorists insist on the centrality of interpersonal relationships in the constitution of human subjectivity. Like other psychoanalysts, they call people objects, because they believe our relations with and experiences of others are never unmediated. Rather, they are shaped by many factors including idiosyncratic desires, fantasies, past relations with the object and others, and feelings about ourselves. Hence, everyone's experience of objects is unique, and our constructs of them may have little resemblance to how they or others construct them.