Fairbairn and the Object Relations Tradition

Graham S. Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429913532
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Ronald Fairbairn developed a thoroughgoing object relations theory that became a foundation for modern clinical thought. This volume is homage to the enduring power of his thinking, and of his importance now and for the future of relational thinking within the social and human sciences. The book gathers an international group of therapists, analysts, psychiatrists, social commentators, and historians, who contend that Fairbairn's work extends powerfully beyond the therapeutic. They suggest that social, cultural, and historical dimensions can all be illuminated by his work. Object relations as a strand within psychoanalysis began with Freud and passed through Ferenczi and Rank, Balint, Suttie, and Klein, to come of age in Fairbairn's papers of the early 1940s. That there is still life in this line of thinking is illustrated by the essays in this collection and by the modern relational turn in psychoanalytic theory, the development of attachment theory, and the increasing recognition that there is 'no such thing as an ego' without context, without relationships, without a social milieu.

PART I

HISTORICAL

INTRODUCTION TO PART I

Graham S. Clarke and David E. Scharff

We begin with assessment of Fairbairn’s background, origins, and theory, many themes from which are taken up throughout the book. Written by David E. Scharff and Ellinor Fairbairn Birtles, Fairbairn’s daughter, who worked tirelessly to keep Fairbairn’s ideas alive, their joint editorship of the two-volume From Instinct to Self (1994), published twenty years ago, documents Fairbairn’s magnificent contribution to psychoanalytic thinking. David E. Scharff’s and Ellinor Fairbairn Birtles’s 1997 paper locates Fairbairn’s work philosophically within the history of psychoanalysis, and points to his widespread but under-acknowledged influence. Intrinsic to their argument is a thorough summary of Fairbairn’s theory.

The next four contributions, exploring the connection with and influence between Suttie and Fairbairn, point to work that has gone on, subsequent to the original publication in 1997 of the paper (reprinted here), researching the historical and social context in which Fairbairn was developing his revolutionary theory. Gal Gerson identifies Hegelian themes in Fairbairn’s work and argues that he follows a different path from other contemporary object relations theorists like Suttie, Bowlby, and Winnicott. Based upon the often-overlooked sections and chapters in Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality that concern social issues, Gerson argues that Fairbairn’s idea of mature dependence is based upon finding a balance between family and state in which the state is the higher order institution, which is why the instance of Sophocles’s Antigone is material. This might also reflect the influence of Aristotle on Fairbairn’s thinking since, “For Aristotle, political activity is not merely a way to pursue our interests, but an essential part of the good life” (Michael Sandel, 2011). Consequently, mature dependence must involve playing a full role in the social world. (Ron Aviram, in the Applications part, also takes up this theme with an investigation into Fairbairn’s social thinking.)

Gavin Miller draws attention to the many religious and scientific influences in the late Victorian and Edwardian Scottish cultural context “in which love itself was dignified as a scientific reality worthy of methodical investigation” (Miller, this volume, p. 47). This helped to make possible the thinking of both Fairbairn and Suttie. Gabriele Cassullo addresses the project of integrating Janet’s and Freud’s model of mind with reference to the work of Ferenczi, Suttie, and Fairbairn.

Neville Symington looks at the relationship between Scottish contemporaries Fairbairn, Suttie, and Macmurray and the roots of their theories. He thinks that both Fairbairn and Suttie, while they tried to transcend Freud’s theory, failed to go far enough in their advocacy of relationship in human communication. He argues that only John Macmurray’s “natural theology” is an adequate grounding for the sort of “reciprocal relations” that psychoanalysis aspires to.

Thanks to a recent donation of Fairbairn’s personal papers by the Fairbairn family to the National Library of Scotland, who hold all of Fairbairn’s other manuscripts, it is now possible to investigate aspects of Fairbairn’s personal life more thoroughly than even the excellent biography of Fairbairn by “Jock” Sutherland. Marie and Lowell Hoffman have used the newly available manuscript material to look in detail at Fairbairn’s lifelong involvement with the church and religion and to suggest deep resonances between Fairbairn’s views and Calvinism. Hilary Beattie has used Fairbairn’s less well known papers and his newly available self-analytic notes to go more deeply into his personal struggles over his own sexuality.

Fairbairn’s work has been influential in Argentina for a long time. A number of contributions throughout the book illustrate that connection. Mercedes Campi and her co-authors’ introduction to the “Fairbairn Space” in Argentina gives a history of Fairbairn’s influence in that country along with the current concerns of the group which are developed further in the Clinical part.

Returning to the present status of Fairbairn’s thinking within contemporary psychoanalysis, Otto Kernberg, who, as much as anyone, has kept the ideas of Fairbairn relevant, reinforces the conclusions that Ellinor and David drew in 1997. Kernberg notes the degree to which different traditions within psychoanalysis have run in parallel without converging even though they represent similar approaches. In particular he notes the similarities between Fairbairn and Edith Jacobson. Kernberg also points to ways in which Fairbairn’s model has been expanded by people like Henry Dicks who applied it to couple therapy, a topic considered by Molly Ludlam in the Clinical part.

References

Birtles, E. F., & Scharff, D. E. (Eds.) (1994). From Instinct to Self: Selected Papers of W. R. D. Fairbairn, Volume II: Applications and Early Contributions. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

Sandel, M. (2011). Aristotle, The Politics: A short overview of the reading. http://www.justiceharvard.org/resources/aristotle-the-politics/last accessed 1 December 2012.

Scharff, D. E., & Birtles, E. F. (Eds.) (1994). From Instinct to Self: Selected Papers of W. R. D. Fairbairn, Volume I: Clinical and Theoretical Papers. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

CHAPTER ONE

From instinct to self: the evolution and implications of W. R. D. Fairbairn’s theory of object relations^*

David E. Scharff and Ellinor Fairbairn Birtles

In 1952 Ernest Jones wrote in his introduction to Fairbairn’s Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality:

Instead of starting, as Freud did, from stimulation of the nervous system proceeding from excitation of various erotogenous zones and internal tension arising from gonadic activity, Dr. Fairbairn starts at the centre of the personality, the ego, and depicts its strivings and difficulties in its endeavour to reach an object where it may find support … All this constitutes a fresh approach in psycho-analysis which should lead to much fruitful discussion. (p. v)

W. R. D. Fairbairn brought an original voice and formulation to psychoanalysis. Without general awareness among analysts, his theoretical contributions have guided the revolution in psychoanalysis during the past twenty-five years (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983; Sutherland, 1989), and his formulations have contributed to the widespread application of analysis to other areas—to the study of trauma and multiple personality, infant development, marriage and the family, religion and pastoral care, to the understanding of groups, institutions, and society, to psychology of the arts, and to an evolution in the philosophical understanding of human experience. Nevertheless, his ideas passed from being little known to being general assumptions without ever being widely and distinctly acknowledged. In this paper we begin by discussing Fairbairn’s background and the philosophical and psychoanalytic origins of his thought; we then outline the central tenets of his object relations theory of the personality, and finally we briefly consider its wider implications. It has been suggested that the extent of Fairbairn’s contribution has been largely unrecognised because he worked in relative isolation in Edinburgh, Scotland from the 1920s until his death in 1964. Close study of the context in which he developed his innovative ideas shows that the seeds of his mature ideas were present from his first records of his thinking in the middle 1920s, when he was writing and teaching graduate and postgraduate students in philosophy, psychology, and medicine. Despite his distance from London, Fairbairn kept well informed about psychoanalytic developments in London, and especially the new work of Melanie Klein, but it is true that he was unable to respond in person to the issues taken up in the “Controversial Discussions” undertaken in London during the war, although he did submit one brief contribution that was read for him (King & Steiner, 1991). He also had frequent if periodic contact with many of the important British analysts during the 1940s and 1950s. The geographical separation from major analytic societies may even have helped preserve Fairbairn’s independence of mind, but it may also have kept his ideas from receiving the understanding and recognition they deserved. For instance, critical commentary written in response to Fairbairn’s articles and his book within British psychoanalysis in the 1940s and 1950s failed to appreciate the magnitude of Fairbairn’s move from a biological instinct theory to a psychological theory of a self chiefly motivated by the need for relationships throughout life. Although Fairbairn provided a new paradigm for the twentieth century (Sutherland, 1989), one which ultimately organised the ensuing development of psychoanalysis, only a few analysts recognised this at the time he was writing.

Soon, however, the heart of Fairbairn’s work became an intrinsic, accepted core of the thinking of the Independent Group of British analysts, whose prominent members included Balint, Winnicott, Sutherland, and Bowlby. His work was always of immediate interest to Melanie Klein and her followers, as was hers to him (Klein, 1946; Scharff, 1996). However, because Klein remained dedicated to Freud’s drive theory even while stressing the importance of object relationships from the beginning, we will see later how her theory, like Freud’s, remained grounded in the mould of nineteenth-century mechanical physics, in the need of the child to rid himself of excessive increments of the drive derivatives. Since instinct theory retains a somatic rather than psychological basis for mental function, Klein’s theory works best for those conditions in which the model of early infantile dependence based on somatic need offers a useful metaphor. It is more problematic as an account of mature adult responsibility and interdependence.

Fairbairn altered his orientation fundamentally, shifting from Freud’s topographical, impulse, and structural models to a psychology based on the need for and internalisation of relationships. His theoretical shift was based on the alternative motivation of a dynamic self seeking an object from whom it gained recognition and security. This shift also provided the theoretical basis for the centrality of the therapeutic relationship, and therefore presaged the clinical shift in the writing of the Kleinians and others to the use of countertransference and of the therapist’s subjective experience (Heimann, 1950; Klein, 1952; Winnicott, 1949). His understanding of the importance of the relationship with the mother and family in infant and child development came fifteen years before Winnicott’s and Bowlby’s published accounts and expansion of ideas in this realm, and were an important part of the climate in which they later developed their contributions. His theory still remains fundamental to a rigorous underpinning of their work.

Fairbairn’s training and experience

On 16 November 1916, while on active duty in the Royal Artillery in Scotland and shortly before his posting to the Middle East, Fairbairn visited the “Craiglockart Hosp. (for nerve-shaken officers)”, where he met “the Cambridge psychologist Capt. [W. H. R.] Rivers” (Fairbairn’s diary, 1916). The hysterical injuries, or war neuroses, that he saw there made an indelible impression on him and he decided to undertake medical training in order to become a psychotherapist. His study of Freud began in 1919 with The Interpretation of Dreams and continued until his death in 1964. In 1921, while still a medical student, he began analysis with Dr Ernest Connell three to five times per week from July of that year probably until the end of December 1922. Connell was an Australian, who came to Edinburgh in 1920 and practised psychoanalysis there from 1921. From Fairbairn’s diaries, it appears that Connell held an appointment at Craighouse Mental Hospital during the 1920s. It has not been possible to establish when his analysis with Connell ended as the diaries for 1923, 1924, and 1925 are the only ones missing in a series that goes from 1910–1964. However, Fairbairn started private psychoanalytic practice in 1923, when he qualified in medicine. From that date until 1935 he held a variety of appointments at mental hospitals in and around Edinburgh, which ran concurrently with his lectureships in psychology in the discipline of mental philosophy from 1927–1935, and in psychiatry from 1931–1932. His special subject was adolescence, and he also taught philosophy. He used psychoanalytic techniques in his clinical work at the University Psychological Clinic, and, from 1933, at the Child and Juvenile Clinic. In 1929, while acting as an expert witness, he was the first person to introduce the concept of “diminished responsibility” in a court of law.

From 1929, when Fairbairn attended the International Psychoanalytical Congress in Oxford, he was internationally acknowledged in psychoanalysis. He was elected as an associate member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1931 and a full member in 1939. His experience of the dissociative symptomatology of sexually and physically abused children, and of adults suffering from war neurosis, began with his clinical work in 1923 and continued to the end of his life. In spite of his personal reservations as to its validity (1932, unpublished) Fairbairn followed Freud’s example and undertook self-analysis (Sutherland, 1989, pp. 65–82).

The philosophical origins of Fairbairn’s thought

Fairbairn brought to his own writing a careful study of Freud’s major contributions and a dedication to logical thought derived from his training in philosophy. For this reason it is relevant to review the philosophical origins of his point of view. There are two distinct philosophical traditions within European thought. The first, Platonic tradition, is dissociative in that it examines discrete parts of functions in isolation from the whole. The second, derived from Aristotle, is integrative, relating parts to each other within a whole. Freud’s view of human nature assumed a Platonic division between mind and body, a dualism that was enshrined in the Christian intellectual tradition and which was consistent with the nineteenth-century scientific tradition. In this view, mind and body are concrete entities whose mode of connection is conflictual opposition, leading by analogy to Freud’s ideas of conflict between life and death instincts or between sex and aggression, id and ego, and the individual and society. In Freud’s view of mental health, conflictual dualism is expressed in the form of what Isaiah Berlin (1949) called “negative freedom”, that is, freedom “from” interference from internal or external forces. In this way a fundamentally exclusive and defensive psychology was incorporated into psychoanalytic theory.

In contrast, Fairbairn’s critical reorientation of psychoanalysis assumes a dialectical idea of human nature, an Aristotelian view expanded in the nineteenth century by Kant and Hegel, who defined human nature as integral and participatory: each individual strives for integration and reciprocity. Mind and body have equal status, and conflict is accommodated through the medium of change and mutually influencing reciprocity between differing elements.

Fairbairn’s philosophical roots sprang from his extensive studies in the Department of Mental Philosophy, undertaken as his first degree at Edinburgh University before his medical studies. There the focus was on the psychology of man and the products of his mind, undertaken in such studies as logic, ethics, and the philosophies of law and education. The metaphysical content of the syllabus was influenced by the interest of Professor Andrew Seth, later called Pringle-Pattison (1882) and that of his contemporaries, in the philosophical development of Kantian and Hegelian ideas. Fairbairn supplemented this background with postgraduate studies in Greek philosophy and the German language, undertaken in Germany. This course of study gave him a thorough knowledge of the philosophical accounts of the subjective experience of that ...