Why read Fairbairn?

The author offers a close reading of portions of Fairbairn's work in which he not only explicates and clarifies Fairbairn's thinking, but generates ideas of his own by developing concepts that he believes to be implicit in, or logical extensions of, Fairbairn's work. Among the unstated or underdeveloped aspects of Fairbairn's contribution that the author discusses are (1) the idea that the formation of the internal object world is always, in part, a response to trauma (actual failure on the part of the mother to convey to her infant a sense that she loves him and accepts his love); (2) the notion that the infant's unceasing efforts to transform the internalized relationship with the unloving mother into a loving relationship — thus reversing the effect on his mother of his (imagined) ‘toxic love’ — is the single most important motivation sustaining the structure of the internal object world; and (3) the idea that attacks on oneself for the way one loves, while self-destructive, contain a glimmer of insight into one's own self-hatred and shame regarding one's endless, futile attempts to change oneself (or the rejecting object) into a different person. The author, using his own clinical work, illustrates the way he makes use of his understanding of the ‘emotional life’ of internal objects to facilitate the patient's emotional growth.

(Final version accepted 1 July 2009)