SOCIAL COGNITION AND OBJECT RELATIONS

Social cognition research and psychoanalytic object relations theory both address the cognitive and affective processes that mediate interpersonal functioning. Each approach faces a number of difficulties that could be more readily addressed by examining the methods, assumptions, metaphors, and models of the other. Social cognitive research could benefit from the psychoanalytic understanding of affective processes, defensive processes, and unconscious representations; object relations approaches could benefit from social cognitive methodologies and developmental findings. Current research suggests that despite certain incompatibilities between the approaches, integrative methods and models are both possible and potentially useful in exploring phenomena such as poor social functioning in borderline personality disorder.