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Grotstein and Rinsley have performed a valuable service for the psychoanalytic community by bringing together these seventeen papers, together with an epilogue and three useful appendices (one listing Fairbairn's main papers, another listing contributions related to Fairbairn's work, and one outlining Fairbairn's concepts and terminology). Although nine of the papers—including Fairbairn's own synopsis of his theory, and papers by Sutherland, Kernberg, Mitchell, Ogden, Hughes, Rinsley, Padel, and Robbins—and two of the appendices have previously been published, it is useful nevertheless to have the opportunity to read such a range of interpretations and critiques of Fairbairn's work, offered from diverse theoretical and clinical viewpoints, in relation to one another.
In the area of theory, previously unpublished essays include Grotstein and Rinsley's “Introduction,” Grotstein's “Notes on Fairbairn's Metapsychology,” Rubens' “Fairbairn's Structural Theory,” Grotstein's “Endopsychic Structure and the Cartography of the Internal World,” and Modell's “Fairbairn's Structural Theory and the Communication of Affects.” In the area of clinical formulations, previously unpublished papers include Symington's “The Tradition of Fairbairn,” Armstrong-Perlman's “The Allure of the Bad Object,” and Hamilton's “Resistance to the Release of the Bad Object in the Psychotherapy of a Refugee.” I found the last two clinical papers most interesting in that they provide a concrete view of how Fairbairnian theory actually operates in clinical practice. Although previously published, Michael Robbins' essay, “A Fairbairnian Object Relations Perspective on Self Psychology” opens up a view of Fairbairn as both a precursor of the psychology of the self and as a theorist from whom self psychology may well have a good deal still to learn.
Although, according to the dustcover, “Fairbairn has had a profound influence in almost every area of contemporary theory and practice,” it is my impression that, p