Fairbairn and the Origins of Object Relations.: Edited by James S. Grotstein and Donald B. Rinsley. New York/London: The Guilford Press, 1994. 350 pp.

Many analysts believe that a change in scientific paradigm has been evolving in contemporary psychoanalysis, a shift from processes believed to originate in the depths of an isolated mental apparatus to processes understood as taking form within a relational matrix,1 or constitutive intersubjective systems.2 From the perspective of this evolving paradigm, phenomena that have been the traditional focus of psychoanalytic inquiry are grasped, both developmentally and in the psychoanalytic situation, as crystallizing at the interface of reciprocally interacting worlds of experience.

Fairbairn and the Origins of Object Relations, with a list of contributors that reads like a Who's Who of contemporary object relations theory, is a testament to Fairbairn's early contributions to this paradigm shift. The book's title can be read as having a double meaning that points to its dual focus: Fairbairn's theory of the origins of object relations and Fairbairn as an originator of object relations theory. Taken together, the chapters in this valuable anthology suggest that Fairbairn may be viewed as a transitional figure in the theoretical evolution I have described. While taking a significant step in the direction of relational-model theorizing (Mitchell), he nevertheless kept one foot firmly planted in what I have called “the myth of the isolated mind” (see footnote 2).

As is chronicled by nearly every contributor to the volume (the repetition certainly drives the point home), the foundation stone of Fairbairn's metapsychological edifice is his postulation of the motivational primacy of personal relatedness rather than instinctual discharge. Hence, libido for Fairbairn is always object-seeking rather than pleasure-seeking, relational rather than hedonic. Child- caregiver relationships undergo internalization, according to Fairbairn,