BEYOND ORALITY - TOWARD AN OBJECT RELATIONS INTERACTIONIST RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE ETIOLOGY AND DYNAMICS OF DEPENDENCY/

Although the classical psychoanalytic model of dependency contends tha t dependent personality traits are rooted in infantile feeding and wea ning experiences and should be associated with various oral behaviors, empirical evidence supporting these assertions is weak. In this artic le I (a) review the empirical literature testing three key hypotheses regarding the dependency-orality relation, (b) briefly review extant o bject relations models of dependency, and (c) describe an integrated o bject relations/interactionist model of dependency that accounts for t he entire range of behaviors exhibited by the dependent person but doe s not invoke the concept of orality to explain dependency-related pers onality dynamics. Evidence supporting the object relations/interaction ist model is reviewed, and the clinical implications of this model are discussed.