Lost — and Found — in Translation: Do Ronald Fairbairn's Ideas Still Speak Usefully to 21st Century Couple Therapists?

An alternative choice of title for this article might have been “The Contribution of Ronald Fairbairn's Ideas to 21^st Century Object Relations Couple Psychotherapy.” In some circles, Fairbairn is known as the Father, and Melanie Klein as the Mother, of Object Relations Therapy. Interestingly, however, in these days of single parenting, with mothers, in particular, going it alone, Klein is often identified as if she is the single-handed mother of Object Relations, while Fairbairn's role as father, especially in Kleinian circles, is completely forgotten or ignored. The desire to honour Fairbairn explains, in part, some of the reasoning behind choosing the title, “Lost — and Found — in Translation.” I also want to emphasise the difficulties there have been in understanding Fairbairn's language, alongside the “translation” and recognition of his ideas, that have enabled them to be used as a secure base from which to develop psychoanalytic thinking. Here, my particular focus is on the fundamental role his concepts have played in developing couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

The difficulties Fairbairn's work has encountered in being taken in and acknowledged raise questions about what it is that gets in the way when we try to convey our thoughts. Native English speakers in Britain and the U.S. are often said to be divided by a common language, making the potential for misunderstanding ever present. In Britain there is a saying: “What counts is not what you say, but the way that you say it.” Psychotherapists know, of course, that both matter. What you say and how you say it affect not only how you are understood, but whether you are taken seriously. Certainly, this was Fairbairn's experience. Like many other psychoanalytic thinkers, he created his own language, but, in doing so, he struggled to find terms that his peers would readily adopt as useful and authoritative. As a result, many of the ideas of this unassuming Scot did get “lost” in the London-centred,