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We shall turn now to other psychoanalytic theories of object relations and the place accorded by each of them to separation anxiety and object-loss. I have chosen to present the theories which seem to me to be foremost among those which have influenced and still influence the practice of psychoanalysis today.
I shall begin with the theory of Fairbairn, who distinguishes between levels of dependence on objects according to the degree to which differentiation and separation anxieties have been worked through. I shall then present the views of Winnicott on early anxieties and the holding function which he attributes to the psychoanalytic process-a function which he describes as helping to strengthen the ‘capacity to be alone in the presence of someone’. We shall examine later the place of separation anxiety in the ideas of Anna Freud and the related ones of Spitz, as well as in Mahler's concept of separation-individuation and in Kohut's technique. The positions of Anna Freud, Spitz and Mahler, as well as those of Klein and the post-Kleinian analysts, can in fact be seen as models for the understanding of separation and objectloss anxieties in both adults and children. Each of these models belongs to an individual line of thought, whose originality lends internal coherence to each of the relevant theories and has the effect that they are not readily comparable with one another. This review ends with a discussion of the particular place of Bowlby, whose research on separation and object-loss is authoritative, but whose conclusions departed from the specific field of psychoanalysis.