Fairbairn's Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting

Fairbairn's Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting
Author: David P. Celani
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0231149077
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W. R. D. Fairbairn (1889-1964) challenged the dominance of Freud's drive theory with a psychoanalytic theory based on the internalization of human relationships. Fairbairn assumed that the unconscious develops in childhood and contains dissociated memories of parental neglect, insensitivity, and outright abuse that are impossible the children to tolerate consciously. In Fairbairn's model, these dissociated memories protect developing children from recognizing how badly they are being treated and allow them to remain attached even to physically abusive parents. Attachment is paramount in Fairbairn's model, as he recognized that children are absolutely and unconditionally dependent on their parents. Kidnapped children who remain attached to their abusive captors despite opportunities to escape illustrate this intense dependency, even into adolescence. At the heart of Fairbairn's model is a structural theory that organizes actual relational events into three self-and-object pairs: one conscious pair (the central ego, which relates exclusively to the ideal object in the external world) and two mostly unconscious pairs (the child's antilibidinal ego, which relates exclusively to the rejecting parts of the object, and the child's libidinal ego, which relates exclusively to the exciting parts of the object). The two dissociated self-and-object pairs remain in the unconscious but can emerge and suddenly take over the individual's central ego. When they emerge, the "other" is misperceived as either an exciting or a rejecting object, thus turning these internal structures into a source of transferences and reenactments. Fairbairn's central defense mechanism, splitting, is the fast shift from central ego dominance to either the libidinal ego or the antilibidinal ego-a near perfect model of the borderline personality disorder. In this book, David Celani reviews Fairbairn's five foundational papers and outlines their application in the clinical setting. He discusses the four unconscious structures and offers the clinician concrete suggestions on how to recognize and respond to them effectively in the heat of the clinical interview. Incorporating decades of experience into his analysis, Celani emphasizes the internalization of the therapist as a new "good" object and devotes entire sections to the treatment of histrionic, obsessive, and borderline personality disorders.

Fairbairn and Relational Theory

Fairbairn and Relational Theory
Author: Frederico Pereira
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429899297
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The richness of Fairbairn's work is demonstrated in a series of essays offering a unique exploration of the application of his concepts to diverse areas ranging from philosophy to psychopathology. This volume opens with an examination of the origins and relevance of Fairbairn's ideas and subsequently turns to the application of his theory to the study of depression, hysteria, and to the field of liason psychiatry. Fairbairn's ideas are further applied to the study of dreams and aesthetics in two original essays. The book concludes with a delineation of the future of his contribution to contemporary theories of object relations and to the emergence of a new psychoanalytic paradigm.

Fairbairn and Relational Theory

Fairbairn and Relational Theory
Author: Frederico Pereira
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9780429474521
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"The richness of Fairbairn's work is demonstrated in a series of essays offering a unique exploration of the application of his concepts to diverse areas ranging from philosophy to psychopathology. This volume opens with an examination of the origins and relevance of Fairbairn's ideas and subsequently turns to the application of his theory to the study of depression, hysteria, and to the field of liason psychiatry. Fairbairn's ideas are further applied to the study of dreams and aesthetics in two original essays. The book concludes with a delineation of the future of his contribution to contemporary theories of object relations and to the emergence of a new psychoanalytic paradigm."--Provided by publisher.

Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory

Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory
Author: Jay R. Greenberg
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2013-12-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0674417003
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Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory provides a masterful overview of the central issue concerning psychoanalysts today: finding a way to deal in theoretical terms with the importance of the patient's relationships with other people. Just as disturbed and distorted relationships lie at the core of the patient's distress, so too does the relation between analyst and patient play a key role in the analytic process. All psychoanalytic theories recognize the clinical centrality of “object relations,” but much else about the concept is in dispute. In their ground-breaking exercise in comparative psychoanalysis, the authors offer a new way to understand the dramatic and confusing proliferation of approaches to object relations. The result is major clarification of the history of psychoanalysis and a reliable guide to the fundamental issues that unite and divide the field. Greenberg and Mitchell, both psychoanalysts in private practice in New York, locate much of the variation in the concept of object relations between two deeply divergent models of psychoanalysis: Freud's model, in which relations with others are determined by the individual's need to satisfy primary instinctual drives, and an alternative model, in which relationships are taken as primary. The authors then diagnose the history of disagreement about object relations as a product of competition between these disparate paradigms. Within this framework, Sullivan's interpersonal psychiatry and the British tradition of object relations theory, led by Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Guntrip, are shown to be united by their rejection of significant aspects of Freud's drive theory. In contrast, the American ego psychology of Hartmann, Jacobson, and Kernberg appears as an effort to enlarge the classical drive theory to accommodate information derived from the study of object relations. Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory offers a conceptual map of the most difficult terrain in psychoanalysis and a history of its most complex disputes. In exploring the counterpoint between different psychoanalytic schools and traditions, it provides a synthetic perspective that is a major contribution to the advance of psychoanalytic thought.

Fairbairn, Then and Now

Fairbairn, Then and Now
Author: Neil J. Skolnick
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1134897332
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W. R. D. Fairbairn was both a precursor and an architect of revolutionary change in psychoanalysis. Through a handful of tightly reasoned papers written in the 1940s and 1950s, Fairbairn emerged as an incisive, albeit relatively obscure, voice in the wilderness, at considerable remove from mainstream Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalysis. But in the 1970s Harry Guntrip made Fairbairn's thinking more accessible to a wide readership, and Fairbairn's object relations theory, with its innovative theoretical and clinical concepts, was at the center of the turn toward relational thinking that swept psychoanalysis in the 1980s and 1990s. Fairbairn, Then and Now is a landmark volume, because a thorough grasp of Fairbairn's contribution is crucial to any understanding of what is taking place within psychoanalysis today. And Fairbairn's work remains a treasure trove of rich insights into the problems and issues in theory and clinical practice with which analysts and therapists are struggling today. This is a particularly propitious time for renewed focus on Fairbairn's contribution. A wealth of previously unpublished material has recently emerged, and the implications of Fairbairn's ideas for current developments in trauma, dissociation, infant research, self theory, field theory, and couple and family therapy are becoming increasingly clear. The conference that stimulated the contributions to this volume by internationally eminent Fairbairn clinicians and scholars was a historically important event, and Fairbairn, Then and Now makes the intellectual ferment generated by this event available to all interested readers.

Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology

Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology
Author: Frank Summers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317771400
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In Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology: A Comprehensive Text, Frank Summers provides thorough, lucid, and critically informed accounts of the work of major object relations theorists: Fairbairn, Guntrip, Klein, Winnicott, Kernberg, and Kohut. His expositions achieve distinction on two counts. First, the work of each object relations theorist is presented as a comprehensive whole, with separate sections expounding the theorist's ideas and assumptions about metapsychology, development, psychopathology, and treatment, with a critical evaluation of the strengths and limitations of the theory in question. Second, the emphasis in each chapter is on issues of clinical understanding and technique. Making extensive use of case material provided by each of the theorists, he shows how each object relations theory yields specific clinical approaches to a variety of syndromes, and how these approaches entail specific modifications in clinical technique. Beyond his detailed attention to the theoretical and technical differences among object relations theories, Summers' penultimate chapter discusses the similarities and differences of object relations and interpersonal theories. And his concluding chapter outlines a pragmatic object relations approach to development, psychopathology, and technique that combines elements of all object relations theories without opting for any single theory. Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology is that rare event in psychoanalytic publishing: a substantial, readable text that surveys a broad expanse of theoretical and clinical landscape with erudition, sympathy, and critical perspective. It will be essential reading for all analysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers who wish to familiarize themselves with object relations theories in general, sharpen their understanding of the work of specific object relations theorists, or enhance their ability to employ these theories in their clinical work.

Relationality

Relationality
Author: Stephen A. Mitchell
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2022-09-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000632075
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This book, first published in the year of the author’s death, expresses Mitchell’s vision for the theory of relational psychoanalysis, and provides his most-developed expression of its foundations. Now republished in this Classic Edition, Mitchell’s ideas are brought back to the psychoanalytic readership, complete with a new introduction by Donnel Stern. In his final contribution to the psychoanalytic literature, the late Stephen A. Mitchell provided a brilliant synthesis of the interrelated ideas that describe the relational matrix of human experience. Relationality charts the emergence of the relational perspective in psychoanalysis by reviewing the contributions of Loewald, Fairbairn, Bowlby, and Sullivan, whose voices converge in apprehending the fundamental relationality of the human mind. Mitchell draws on the multiple dimensions of attachment, intersubjectivity, and systems theory in espousing a clinical approach equally notable for its responsiveness and responsible restraint. This remains a canonical text for all relational psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

Object Relations in Gestalt Therapy

Object Relations in Gestalt Therapy
Author: Gilles Delisle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429916671
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This book focuses on the psychoanalytic theory of object relations in order to integrate certain pertinent elements of Fairbairn's theory of object relations, to achieve the proposed revision by Perls et al. of Gestalt therapy's theory of the Self.

Object Relations Theory and Self Psychology in Soc

Object Relations Theory and Self Psychology in Soc
Author: Eda Goldstein
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2010-07-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1451603185
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Object Relations and Self Psychology are two leading schools of psychological thought discussed in social work classrooms and applied by practitioners to a variety of social work populations. Yet both groups have lacked a basic manual for teaching and reference -- until now. For them, Dr. Eda G. Goldstein's book fills a void on two fronts: Part I provides a readable, systematic, and comprehensive review of object relations and self psychology, while Part II gives readers a friendly, step-by-step description and illustration of basic treatment techniques. For educators, this textbook offers a learned and accessible discussion of the major concepts and terminology, treatment principles, and the relationship of object relations and self psychology to classic Freudian theory. Practitioners find within these pages treatment guidelines for such varied problems as illness and disability, the loss of a significant other, and such special problems as substance abuse, child maltreatment, and couple and family disruptions. In a single volume, Dr. Goldstein has met the complex challenges of education and clinical practice.