Fairbairn's Theory of Object Relations

Ronald Fairbairn's writings show that he has very carefully assimilated Freud's classical theory. However, struck by the significance of object relationships in the treatment of schizoid patients, he departs from classical psychoanalytic theory in a number of critical respects. Fairbairn expresses his highly original and intellectually vigorous ideas on human personality in a series of papers from 1940 onward (Sutherland, “Obituary” and “British”). His theory forms the foundation for some of the most significant advancements in contemporary psychoanalysis. The core of Fairbairn's theory is the notion that psychic structure, the self, is based directly on the vicissitudes of object relatedness (Rubens).

The present overview of Fairbairn's theory of object relations focuses on four theoretical cornerstones upon which his psychoanalytical thinking rests. These foundations include (1) Fairbairn's description of the schizoid personality as found in Schizoid Factors in the Personality, (2) the psychoanalytic development from classical libido theory to object relations theory, (3) Fairbairn's theory of the development of human object relationships, both described in A Revised Psychopathology of the Psychoses and Psychoneuroses, and (4) Fairbairn's revision of the mental apparatus which conceptualizes the basic endopsychic structure as a multiplicity of egos. Fairbairn's views regarding the mental structure are most clearly stated in Endopsychic Structure Considered in Terms of Object-Relationships.

The study of schizoid patients led Fairbairn to the conclusion that their etiology lies in the mother's failure to give the infant an adequate experience of “being loved for himself.” Thus Fairbairn sees the basis of healthy development not in the satisfaction of instincts, but in the passing on to the infant that it is a person and that it is loved as such. When deprived of this experience, the child becomes too frightened to make object relations. The chi