Ronald Fairbairn

Klein's theory resembles Fairbairn's (1954). He believed that an ego existed from birth, that libido is a function of the ego, that there is no death instinct, and that aggression is a response to frustration or lack. Fairbairn states that the ego (and libido) is object-seeking and reality-oriented in supporting the infant's connection to the initial object, mother's breast, and eventually, mother as a whole. Fairbairn believed that frustrations—mostly temporary separations from mother—cause separation anxiety, the earliest and most rudimentary form of worry. Frustrations cause internalization and ambivalence.

Fairbairn believed the ego suppresses the internalized object's exciting and frustrating qualities. Two suppressed internal objects—the exciting (or libidinal) and the rejecting—emerge (or antilibidinal). Both bring elements of the ego into repression, where they are cathected, leaving the basic ego unrepressed but repressing. The original ego is divided into three entities: a core (conscious) ego attached to an ideal object (ego ideal), a repressed libidinal ego attached to the thrilling object, and a repressed antilibidinal ego attached to the rejecting object.

The patient's first relationship to the analyst as an ideal object indicates the core conscious ego's fight against the repressed libidinal and antilibidinal internalized object relationships, which progressively emerge in transference. Schizoid and hysterical people have an enlarged core ego due to excessive schizoid operations, according to Fairbairn. \n

Fairbairn believed the newborn's initial concern was that its love for mother would drain and kill her, making it feel worthless and depleted. Fairbairn believed this dream gave schizoid people an aggressive edge to their dependent demands. According to Fairbairn, mother's frustration was only felt later when the individual's violent inclinations were projected onto mother as a terrible object and internalized as a negative internal object. Fairbairn considered these split-off internalized object interactions endopsychic formations, rather than fantasies.

Fairbairn believed that anal and phallic conflicts were "techniques" generated in a series of interactions and struggles with parental objects, not phases.

Fairbairn considered the development of masochistic tendencies in therapy as a key sign of the transference of previously split-off poor internalized object connections and a crucial step in the resolution of pathological schizoid states. He defined the "masochistic defense" as unconscious efforts to maintain relationships with frustrating but necessary objects: the self's "absolution of blame" of the object transformed the object's unconditional badness into a conditional one, and the experience of unconscious guilt expressed this effort. He suggested that psychoanalytic resolution of unconscious guilt sentiments might exacerbate the patient's resistances and negative therapeutic reactions because he would have to confront his libidinal attachment to bad, ambivalently loved things, a crucial feature of internalized object relations.

Fairbairn used a fairly traditional psychoanalytic method for most of his career. He only made small changes to the psychoanalytic setting later in his career to let the patient see the analyst if he wanted to. Two of his biggest fans are Sutherland (1989) and Guntrip (1961, 1968, 1971). The latter changed Fairbairn's approach a lot and made him reject drive theory even more strongly than he had before.

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