In this article, we provide a historical overview of the Object Relations Inventory (ORI) and related methods for the assessment of object relations constructed by Sidney Blatt and colleagues (e.g., Blatt, Bers, & Schaffer, 199224.
Blatt, S. J., Bers, S. A., & Schaffer, C. E. (1992). The assessment of self. Unpublished research manual, Yale University, New Haven, CT.View all references; Blatt, Wein, Chevron, & Quinlan, 197930.
Blatt, S. J., Wein, S. J., Chevron, E. S., & Quinlan, D. M. (1979). Parental representations and depression in normal young adults. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88, 388–397.View all references; Diamond, Kaslow, Coonerty, & Blatt, 199047.
Diamond, D., Kaslow, N., Coonerty, S., & Blatt, S. J. (1990). Change in separation-individuation and intersubjectivity in long-term treatment. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 7, 363–397.View all references). We clarify terminology that has been used inconsistently in the literature, especially by way of differentiating the methods used to collect descriptions of significant figures, such as the ORI and its predecessor, the Parental Description (PD) task, and the rating scales that Blatt and colleagues constructed to rate those descriptions. We provide a tabular summary of empirical studies of the measure and offer a critical review of those aspects of the instrument that require further empirical investigation and methodological rigor.