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Celani's book is based on the difficulties he encountered with ‘borderline’ patients addicted to frustrating, rejective relationships with either their actual parents or with significant others. Such patients seem immune to relationships with better objects. Sadly they may also seem immune to classical psychoanalytic technique.
The book is valuable for its clear exposition of Fairbairn's account of the development of internalization, splitting and secondary repression, but the main emphasis is not metapsychology. Fairbairn's challenge to the Freudian paradigm, as developed by Celani, also challenges the prevailing assumptions about ‘proper’ psychoanalytic technique. As yet, the implications of Fairbairn's interpersonal, developmental model of the emergent self have been little explored and, given the relative neglect of his theory, I provide a sketchy summary.
For Fairbairn, the persistent feature underlying the varying symptomatology of borderline personality is infantile dependence. Celani agrees with Fairbairn's premise of a fundamental need for acceptance. In proportion to the failure to meet and acknowledge this basic self-need, the child will internalize the too-frustrating relationship, making it more amenable to psychological control. If the condition of infantile dependence persists, the child, and then the ‘borderline’ adult, cannot reject the unsatisfactory object. The strength of the undercurrent of need blocks separation and individuation. The immature self cannot encompass the loss of hope for a good relationship with the original object.
Frustration excites and intensifies need but also exacerbates rage and hatred. To solve this dilemma of ambivalence the internalized object is split, and this splitting carries over to a splitting of the nascent self. This promotes ego distortion because it gives rise to three ego structures each relating to three respective internalized objects. The needy libidinal self relates to the exciting object. The anti-libidinal