The limitations of the object relations model

The position expressed in this paper is that there is no drive without object, and no object relationship except in the context of the drives. If primacy is to be attributed to any of the factors involved in mental functioning, it should be to the workings of the pleasure-unpleasure principle; the latter cannot be conceived as independent of the realm of the drives. A clinical case is presented in order to demonstrate why and to what extent it can be severely restrictive to attribute ultimate motivating primacy to a hypothetical object-seeking tendency conceived of as operating outside the sphere of the drives.