William RD Fairbairn

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William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn (born August 11, 1889 in Edinburgh , † December 31, 1964 there ) was a British psychoanalyst and pioneer of object relationship theory .

Life

Fairbairn, whose father devout Presbyterian was and even his life knew how long a devout Christian who studied at the University of Edinburgh philosophy , then in Kiel , Strasbourg and Manchester theology and ancient Greek , first with the aim to become a clergyman. After the outbreak of World War I , he joined the Royal Artillery in 1915 . Initially stationed in Edinburgh, he got to know war neuroses and the application of psychoanalytic treatment techniques for the first time in a hospital there . In 1917 he took part as a lieutenant in the offensive under Commander Allenby in Palestine . After the war he studied medicine and from 1921 underwent his own analysis, after which he began to practice as a psychoanalyst in 1925 .

In 1926 he married and started a family. In 1929 he received his doctorate on The Relationship of Dissociation and Displacement . From 1927 to 1935 Fairbairn taught psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Due to his publications he became an associate member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1931, and a full member in 1944. Since 1931 he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1935 he finished his lectureship at the university because of differences with his colleagues and concentrated on his psychoanalytic practice, but continued to work as a psychiatrist in various hospitals .

Fairbairn worked with sexually abused children and, during World War II , with soldiers who responded with depression to the deprivation of their family environment . By staying in Edinburgh throughout his life, he stood apart from the clashes that had raged in London in the early 1940s, which divided the supporters of Anna Freud and those of Melanie Klein . His own work, which established a third point of view, was hardly noticed at that time, but only when he published his essays in book form in 1952. At that time Winnicott put it : "if only Fairbairn didn't knock Freud ..."

In the last years of his life he suffered increasingly from depression and Parkinson's disease .

theory

Fairbairn dealt with the Freudian drive theory from his first publications . When he became acquainted with Melanie Klein's writings in the mid-1930s, this gradually led to the elaboration of his own position, which differed from both Freud and Melanie Klein's, with which he established the “middle” or “independent” group within British psychoanalysis should - whereby "middle" refers to the classification between the followers of Klein and Anna Freud.

According to Sigmund Freud, the behavior of the individual is controlled by instincts that generate a tension that urges discharge. Fairbairn, on the other hand, postulated that the toddler is related to other people, the primary caregivers, from the beginning and has a realistic perception here; his inner world is shaped as a reaction to experiences with external relationships. In this context, Fairbairn spoke of the “man's search for the object”, which is the fundamental motivation, ie the goal of building close relationships, is for him the fundamental drive of human behavior and not the discharge of instincts as in Freud's. In doing so, he clearly distanced himself from Freud's and Klein's drive theory. From this point of view, drive discharge serves to reach the object via this "channel". From this perspective, sexual disorders are the result of unsuccessful primary object relationships.

By substituting the early addiction of the young child to the Freudian primacy of sexuality, Fairbairn followed Melanie Klein's position. However, he distinguished himself from her by giving the external, real relationship priority over the child's fantasies and drives, which are still primary for Klein, in the form of love and hate.

Only the excessive disappointment of the small child's needs for affection and recognition leads to the development of an inner world in which both the “badness” of the caregiver and their possible overprotection are represented by inner objects : an inner-psychic structure is formed (endopsychic situation) with an internal split, which is general but different in its severity depending on experience and disposition. The unfulfilled needs and disappointment experiences in external reality are split off and repressed with the corresponding parts of the ego and objects:

  • The libidinal ego , which is closely connected with the libidinal object , is separated from the originally undivided ego . All relationship experiences with unfulfilled feelings and longings for complete love and heavenly intimacy are localized in the libidinal ego.
  • In addition, the antilibidinous ego or the inner saboteur with the corresponding rejecting object , which is full of frustration and hatred, is split off and repressed.
  • What remains is the central ego , which is connected to the ideal object or, better, to the accepting object .

The advantage of division and repression is that the needy child can adapt to his primary objects very early on, which is ultimately necessary for survival, but at the high price of an internal split that leads to an "internal civil war". corresponds. It does not experience “the mother is bad”, but rather the child feels inferior and bad and doesn't even know why. In the worst case, the schizoid state, it feels empty and everything is pointless. In the further development this schizoid state is warded off by the defense techniques of the transition stage (paranoid, phobic, compulsive, hysterical technique and by the moral defense).

The importance of Fairbairn's approach to understanding victims of sexual abuse, but also the unstable relationship structure in patients with borderline personality disorder , has been increasingly recognized in recent decades.

Stephen A. Mitchell saw Fairbairn's object relationship theory approach as significant for the development of relational psychoanalysis , i.e. the relationship theoretic approach within psychoanalytic theory, which deals with the mutual dependency of human relationships, including in therapy.

Works (selection)

  • English-language (original) editions:
  • Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality . Original edition, Tavistock Publications in association with Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1952; and: Reprint, paperback edition, Routledge, London 1994, ISBN 0-415-10737-7 .
  • From Instinct to Self. Selected Papers of WRD Fairbairn. Vol. 1, Clinical and Theoretical Papers . Ed .: David E. Scharff, Ellinor Fairbairn Birtles, publisher: Jason Aronson, Northvale (New Jersey / USA) 1994, ISBN 1-56821-080-9 . (1st sub-volume)
  • From Instinct to Self. Selected Papers of WRD Fairbairn. Vol. 2, Applications and Early Contributions . Ed .: Ellinor Fairbairn Birtles, David E. Scharff, publisher: Jason Aronson, Northvale (New Jersey / USA) 1994, ISBN 1-56821-251-8 . (2nd part of the volume)
  • German editions (translations):
  • The self and internal object relationships. A psychoanalytic object relationship theory / William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn . Psychozial-Verlag, Giessen 2000 (= series: Library of Psychoanalysis), ISBN 3-89806-022-5 . (German translation; English original title given as: Psychoanalytical studies of the personality ) (Edition of the most important essays, also contains several works written after 1952)

literature

  • English language editions:
  • Jay R. Greenberg, Stephen A. Mitchell: Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory , Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London 1983, ISBN 0-674-62975-2 .
  • John Derg Sutherland: Fairbairn's Journey into the Interior . First edition, Free Association Books, London 1989, ISBN 1-85343-058-7 . Reprint, paperback, Free Association Books, London 1999, ISBN 1-85343-059-5 . (Biography)
  • James S. Grotstein, Donald B. Rinsley (Eds.): Fairbairn and the Origins of Object Relations . Free Association Books (et al.), London 1994, ISBN 1-85343-340-3 .
  • German editions:
  • Bernhard F. Hensel (Ed.): WRD Fairbairn's significance for modern object relationship theory. Theoretical and clinical developments . Orig.-Edition, Psychosozial-Verlag, Gießen 2006 (= series: Bibliothek der Psychoanalyse), ISBN 3-89806-431-X .
  • Gerd Heising, Bernhard F. Hensel, Wolf-Detlev Rost: On the attractiveness of the bad object. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2002, ISBN 3-89806-214-7 .
  • Fairbairn, Ronald , in: Élisabeth Roudinesco ; Michel Plon: Dictionary of Psychoanalysis: Names, Countries, Works, Terms . Translation from French. Vienna: Springer, 2004, ISBN 3-211-83748-5 , pp. 229f.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 4, 2019 .
  2. ^ Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality . Original edition, Tavistock / Routledge, London 1952. (see literature)
  3. ^ John D. Sutherland: Fairbairn's Journey into the Interior , Free Association Books, London 1989, p. 143
personal data
SURNAME Fairbairn, William RD
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fairbairn, William Ronald Dodds (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Edinburgh
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1964
Place of death Edinburgh