An integrative study of differing relational patterns produced around the experience of disappointment: Theoretical and clinical implications of the distinctive significance and nature of the role of disappointment in the schizoid and depressive processes during childhood development

The subject of this thesis is the child's experience of the disappointment of its wishes during the early, most formative years of its psychological development. This is a common area of study in psychoanalytic developmental theories and a range of these established understandings will be discussed. My research on the child's experience of disappointment, which is presented in the context of these previous theories, endeavours to be original, however, by attempting to establish whether or not the experience is, in the context of the Kleinian object relational understanding of childhood development, significant in a way that has yet to be fully considered. In order to research whether my particular arguments, as to the importance of a child's disappointment, might be valid or not, I firstly explore the experience from the perspective of the relevant psychoanalytical literature on child developmental theory. From this position, I am then able to present my own series of theoretical arguments, and it is from these that a set of hypotheses, about the meaning of disappointment in childhood development, are then able to be proposed. Following this, the thesis describes my examination of these hypotheses by some preliminary clinical research. The overall findings of this research are then presented and applied in support of my theoretical arguments