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Whereas Abraham, in accordance with Freud's viewpoints, subdivided the neuroses and psychoses according to the phase of the development of the libido to which the patient had regressed, later 'ego psychology' laid more stress on the development of object relationships. It would seem that further study of the mutual dependence of leading erogenous zones and the leading attitudes towards the objects is now indicated. But Fairbairn is not of this opinion. He thinks that a correct understanding of the history of object relationships makes such study superfluous and substitutes the idea of the importance of the erogenous zones. This paper explains, in general, how the author pictures such a substitution; the detailed presentation of the theory itself being reserved for further elaboration.
Fairbairn is of the opinion that paranoid, compulsive, hysteric and phobic states are not the result of fixations at different levels of libido development, but different techniques which the ego uses for the solution of the same (oral) conflict.
The relationship towards the objects has, Fairbairn states, a typical development: it tends from identification to object differentiation; the immature aim of incorporation is slowly replaced by a mature 'giving' attitude. Between the immature identification phase and the mature love phase there are transitional states with ambivalence and dichotomy of the objects into good ones and bad ones.
Fairbairn discusses the psychopathology of the transitional states as well as of the identification phase. The overcoming of the phase of identification is unconsciously perceived as an expelling of incorporated objects. The necessity of this expulsion makes the subject 'anal', says Fairbairn, while it is by no means so that the 'erogenous anality' creates the instinctual aim of expulsion. The conflict between a tendency towards separation from the object and the longing to keep the inner object, is the basis of the phobic attitude. The same confli