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According to [[Melanie Klein]], the [[infant]]'s underdeveloped capacity for [[perception]], together with the fact that he is only concerned with his immediate gratifications, means that the [[subject]] begins by relating only to a part of a person rather than the whole. The primordial [[part-object]] is, according to [[Klein]], the [[mother]]'s [[breast]]. As the [[child]]'s [[visual ]] [[apparatus ]] develops, so also does his capacity to perceive [[people ]] as whole [[object]]s rather than collections of [[separate ]] parts.

While the term "[[part-object]]" was first introduced by the [[Kleinian]] [[school]] of [[psychoanalysis]], the origins of the [[concept ]] can be traced back to [[Karl Abraham]]'s [[work ]] and ultimately to [[Freud]].

[[Freud]] also implies that the [[penis]] is a [[part-object]] in his [[discussion ]] of the [[castration complex]] (in which the [[penis]] is imagined as a separable [[organ]]) and in his discussion of [[fetishism]].

[[Lacan]] finds the concept of the [[part-object]] particularly useful in his criticism of [[object-relations theory]], which he attacks for attributing a [[false ]] [[sense ]] of [[completeness ]] to the [[object]].

However, whereas [[Klein]] defines these [[object]]s as [[partial ]] because they are only part of a [[whole]] [[object]], [[Lacan]] takes a different view. They are partial, he argues, "not because these objects are part of a [[total ]] object, the body, but because they [[represent ]] only partially the function that produces [[them]]."<ref>{{E}} p. 315</ref>

In [[other ]] [[words]], in the [[unconscious]] only the [[pleasure]]-giving function of these [[object]]s is represented, while their [[biological]] function is not represented. Furthermore, [[Lacan]] argues that what isolates certain parts of the [[body]] as a [[part-object]] is not any [[biological]] given but the [[signification|signifying]] [[system]] of [[language]].

In addition to the [[partial object]]s already discovered by [[psychoanalytic theory]] before [[Lacan]] (the [[breast]], the [[part-object|faeces]], the [[phallus]] as [[imaginary]] [[object]], and the [[part-object|urinary flow]]), [[Lacan]] adds (in 1960) several more: the [[phoneme]], the [[gaze]], the voice and the [[nothing]].<ref>{{E}} p. 315</ref> These [[partial object]]s all have one feature in common: "they have no [[specular ]] [[image]]."<ref>{{E}} p. 315</ref> In other words, they are precisely that which cannot be assimilated into the [[subject]]'s [[narcissistic]] [[illusion]] of [[lack|completeness]].

[[Lacan]]'s conceptualization of the [[part-object]] is modified with the [[development ]] around 1963-4 of the concept of ''[[objet petit a]]'' as the [[cause]] of [[desire]]. Now each [[partial object]] becomes an [[object]] by virtue of the fact that the [[subject]] takes it for the [[object]] of [[desire]], ''[[objet petit a]]''.<ref>{{S11}} p. 104</ref>