On: Fairbairn and Dynamic Structure

Dear Editors,

We welcome and applaud Thomas Ogden's timely reminder (IJP 91: 101-18, 2010) that there is still much to learn from reading, and rereading, Fairbairn. We think that he presents useful examples of object relationships between dynamic structures (ego-structures and internal objects) as relationships between people — which is how Fairbairn understood them.

Fairbairn made what we think is a key statement about his overall approach in his only contribution to the Controversial Discussions:

… the explanatory concept of ‘phantasy’ has now been rendered obsolete by the concepts of ‘psychical reality’ and ‘internal objects’ which the work of Mrs Klein and her followers has done so much to develop; and in my opinion the time is now ripe for us to replace the concept of ‘phantasy’ by a concept of an ‘inner reality’ peopled by the Ego and its internal objects. These internal objects should be regarded as having an organized structure, an identity of their own, an endopsychic existence and an activity as real within the inner world as those of any objects in the outer world …

It is instructive to note that this proposal was rejected by Susan Isaacs on behalf of the Kleinian group with the following comment:

Dr. Fairbairn … overemphasizes and distorts part of Mrs Klein's theories to the point of caricature. He over-substantifies internal objects and makes them far too independent, leaving wishes and feelings and the id generally out of account.

In his 1944 paper Endopsychic structure considered in terms of object-relationships, Fairbairn clearly states that his approach grew out his critique of impulse psychology and instinct theory:

In a word ‘impulses’ cannot be considered apart from the endopsychic structures, which they energize, and the object relationships, which they enable these structures to establish; and, equally, ‘instincts’ cannot profitably be considered as anything more than forms of energy,