You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.
In proposing to define a psychoanalytic Weltanschauung, I do so deliberately with the indefinite article. I can offer only my own sense of what it means to think psychoanalytically; I do not pretend to speak with the voice of the discipline itself, as if such a prosopopoeia were even possible.
The point of view that I shall espouse and whose implications I shall seek to elucidate is one I would associate with the Middle Group of British object relations theory. The leading light of the group is D. W. Winnicott, but it can also boast the brilliance of W. R. D. Fairbairn, the passion of Michael Balint, the synthetic gifts of Harry Guntrip, the empirical bent of John Bowlby, and the creativity of Marion Milner, to invoke only the most talismanic names. Through Balint, there is a direct link to the Hungarian legacy of Sandor Ferenczi, and the neglected premonitions of Otto Rank must also be given their due. The indispensable antecedent of Fairbairn's theoretical breakthrough, of course, is Melanie Klein's work, though Klein herself remained tied to the outmoded terminology of Freud's instinct theory, whose limitations her pioneering exploration of internal objects did so much to expose. The current state of object