Fairbairn’s metaphor of the human mind (Handout for online presentations and courses at the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, 2020, updated 2024.)

The superordinate need of the child is not for pleasure or need gratification, but for an intense relationship with another person. If the caretakers do provide opportunities for pleasurable experiences, then pleasure is sought, not as an end in itself, but as a vehicle of interaction with others. If only painful experiences are provided, the child does not give up and look for pleasurable experiences elsewhere but seeks pain as a vehicle for interaction with the significant other. It is the contact, not the pleasure which is primary. (Mitchell, 1988, 27)

Object Relations

The structural and dynamic relationships between views of oneself in relation to others in both the conscious and unconscious world. An object is a person outside the self. The term was shortened from a “sexual object” which originated from the Freudian model. Object relations theory assumes that every self requires an object to create it. There is no such thing as a child in isolation from others. Thus, every self is defined by interaction with significant others.

Structuralization

Structuralization is the application of metaphors or hypothetical constructs by any given theorist to the processes that he/she assumes are taking place in the human psyche during psychological development. For example, classical Freudian Theory assumes that the fundamental structure is “The Id”, which is lodged in the unconscious and is part of our biological inheritance. The other two Freudian structures, “The Ego” and “The Superego,” evolve from “The Id.” Structuralization in Freud’s model comes about as the result of the forced socialization of the child’s primitive Id by the limits imposed by society (via the parents) and this process determines the shape and extent of the inner structures.

Structuralization in Object Relations Theory

Object relations theory assumes that there is no such thing as a biologically inherited Id. Instead, it proposes that the infant develops internal ego structures and a sense of self as a consequence of the prior (as well as ongoing) relationships with his/her parents or caretakers. At first, the structures are a series of vague memories of the emotional tone of the relational events that have occurred. Over time, after thousands and thousands of interactions with the parent(s) (the objects) have occurred,

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a series of firm well developed structures (views of the self in relation to others) gradually develop.  Fairbairn’s model is based on the assumption that for every self, there has to be an object that originally related to the child. His model describes the development of three self and object pairs, all based on the relationship between the child and parent. The three self and object structures are:

1. The conscious “Central Ego” which relates to the nurturing parent or “The Ideal Object.”
2. The mostly unconscious “Antilibidinal Ego” that relates to the rejecting aspects of the parent which is called “The Rejecting Object”.
3. The mostly unconscious “Libidinal Ego” that relates to the fantasy of love and the hope for love from the parent, called the “Exciting Object.”

The events and processes that create this complex inner and outer world are explained by Fairbairn’s object relations theory.

Internalized Objects

Memories of the parents’ relationship with the child can be classified into two separate groups: those involving the parent caring for the child, protecting the child and relating to its expressed needs – they are called internalized ‘good objects,’ and those that produce the memories developed during times when the child’s legitimate needs for care and nurturance were ignored – they are called internalized ‘bad objects.’

The ratio of good object memories to bad object memories (both groups coalesce into stable views of self and others) determine the individual’s overall mental health. An abundance of internalized good object memories supplies the individual with flexibility and courage when faced with outside stress or failure. The person so endowed will unconsciously tap into these earliest memories to keep himself/herself intact and functional under stress. Conversely, children reared in families that do not attend to their needs for attention, love, and support have far fewer good object memories and their sense of self is under- developed. This results in a weak and unstable central ego that is vulnerable to disruption.

Attachment to the Rejecting Parent

Fairbairn made the brilliant and counterintuitive observation that children that were neglected or abused were more rather than less dependent on their parents. From the adult perspective, this is hard to accept, as adults tend to avoid those who are negative and abusive. Fairbairn recognized that children were utterly dependent on their parents, and consequently parental indifference toward the child left him/her in a state of need that demanded satisfaction. He observed that a child who is not accepted or loved becomes “profoundly fixated on his mother as an object”. The simple reality is that there is no other choice available for a child. He either makes the best of his situation or gives up, a choice that Fairbairn characterized as one between “life and death”. A simple parallel situation is the systematic starvation of a dog- the dog becomes more focused, compliant, and indifferent to play as his hunger causes him to focus on his owner to the exclusion of everything else. The deprived child simultaneously gives up all developmental strivings as they are secondary to his need for love and comfort. Over time the chronically deprived child, who is focused only on his depriving parent, slips further and further developmentally behind his/her peers.

The Dissociative Defense and Splitting

Dissociation has been known from the outset of the study of mental health and is not a defense that is unique to Fairbairn’s model. However, Fairbairn saw dissociation as the first step in the process that creates unconscious sub- personalities (the Inner World) that relate to each other outside of our awareness.  When any individual encounters an event that overwhelms his ability to accept what has happened the psyche forces it into the unconscious as if it never happened. This can happen to adults in time of war or when they are in a major accident which is so horrific and overwhelming that

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accepting the reality of what happened to them would collapse their ego structure. Instead, the event is forced into the unconscious and the individual behaves as if nothing untoward has happened. The splitting defense is Fairbairn’s application of the dissociative defense to actual rejecting/traumatic childhood experiences, which, at the time that he published (during the 1940’s), were not assumed by the analytic community to be developmentally important enough to require dissociation.

When children use the splitting defense, it short-circuits one of the earliest psychological processes- the integration of good and bad objects into a single ambivalently seen object.   Integration of the frustrating and loving aspects of the parent appears around the 4^th year of the child’s life. At this time the emotionally supported child can see, and tolerate, the reality that his/her parents are both loving, and at other times, frustrating and rejecting. Fairbairn’s recognized that the splitting defense was essential to protect the child’s emotional attachment to the object by keeping him/her unaware of the extent and frequency of their parent’s indifference, abusiveness, or neglect. The loss of attachment to the object is the fundamental trauma that the splitting defense is designed to protect the child from experiencing.

Splitting (which is a metaphor based on what people actually do) is an intra-psychic “trick” that allows the child to perceive (or rather misperceive) the parent as if he/she is two different people. This defense separates the indifferent, unresponsive and rejecting parent from the desperately needed “good” parts of the same parent. Consequently, splitting allows the child to remain attached to the “good” parts of the parent, while hiding from the rejecting and destructive parts of the very same parent.

First and Second Splits

Fairbairn noted that it was impossible for a child to have a good object that was also bad, so the object was split into two separate people, a good object and a bad object. The bad object has two distinctly bad aspects to it, the first being its rejecting aspects, and the second being its teasing, alluring aspects which are never fulfilled. The child has to dissociate and then repress both aspects of the rejecting object as they are too frustrating to consciously tolerate.

The Bad Object

This is a key concept in Fairbairn’s model, and one that he alone originated. It refers to two separate aspects of the bad object that he observed. The first was the reality-based rejecting–depriving aspect of the parental object which creates ashamed, fearful self in the child’s unconscious. He called this ego structure the antilibidinal ego and it is the child’s sense of self that develops in relationship to the rejecting parent. The child’s shame originates in exposing his need for love and experiencing rejection of his needs again and again. In effect, he learns he is not worth his parent’s time or effort. This (part) self has experienced so much neglect and abuse that, if the child were able to remember all of the rejecting events in their totality, this awareness would destroy his/her attachment to their parent, and he/she would be exposed to the terror of complete abandonment. It is impossible for the child to remain attached to a parent who the child knows is hateful, indifferent and dangerous. The splitting defense buries the shamed impotent sense of self (the antilibidinal ego) as well as the memories of the rejecting parent in the unconscious. The antilibidinal ego is in a relationship to the internalized rejecting object, and these two sub-selves engage in an internal dialogue that is unknown to the other structures. In adulthood, the shamed, vulnerable and needy antilibidinal ego remains mostly repressed and the individual becomes   avoidant of his early feelings of need, as well as his awareness that his parents neglect/abused him.

Fairbairn also described a second aspect of the bad object which was its teasing-frustrating qualities. Keep in mind that conscious awareness of the “badness” of his parent cannot be tolerated by the child, so he/she has to somehow create the illusion that he has a “good” parent. In extremely dysfunctional families the faulty, indifferent parent(s) are unable to meet a fraction of the child’s

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emotional and developmental needs, yet despite endless rejection, the child must retain the hope that the parent will offer them love in the future. Thus, the extreme need of the child for a good loving parent fosters the child’s creation of a fantasy parent. This concept is unique to Fairbairn’s model and demonstrates that he was acutely aware of the fundamental human need for attachment, love, and support during development.

This second, fantasy-based view of the parent was called the “Exciting Object” by Fairbairn. The libidinal ego and the exciting object engage in a long-term dialogue with each other, which is unknown to the other structures. The libidinal ego prevents the humiliating and rejecting relationship between the antilibidinal self/rejecting object from overwhelming his ability to remain attached to the parent. Thus, the fantasy that there is the possibility of love coming from the exciting object keeps the terror of abandonment at bay.

The two separate levels of splitting, first the good/bad object split and then the second split of the bad object into its rejecting and exciting components produces three separate pairs of self and objects, one conscious and two unconscious. This “multiplicity of egos” may sound like the beginnings of a multiple personality—and in fact, it is. However, it remains static, and the individual does not develop completely independent alters, simply because they are not needed. This “early stage”, or incomplete multiple personality with three selves and three objects is exactly the amount of defense needed to remain attached to the bad object.

The splitting defense allows the child (and later, the adult) to believe that the exciting aspects of the object are completely unrelated to the rejecting aspects of the same person, and thus the attachment to the needed object is saved from destruction. Thus, the child is able to continue its dependent relationship on a bad object by focusing his/her attention on the exciting part-mother and splitting off and repressing the rejecting aspects of the mother. The most common result of splitting during development is a middle-aged individual who shows a developmental arrest in which he/she remains living with his parents, enraged and impotent, fearful of the world and plagued by underachievement, and simultaneously dreaming of future love or victory over his/her enemies.

The Weak Central Ego

The actual number of relational events in which the rejecting parent acted as a good object who related warmly to the child and thus helped the development of the child’s central ego can be very low in dysfunctional families. Pathological parents tend to be so overwhelmingly negative that the developing child lives in his/her inner world (mostly unconscious) while simultaneously avoiding daily reality. The resulting weak central ego is unstable, and conversely, the angry and shamed antilibidinal ego is robust and fueled with resentment of parental indifference. Simultaneously, the libidinal ego is fueled by the need for love and hope. The conscious central ego is weak because there have not been enough positive events to allow a firm sense of self (the central ego) to develop, so the two powerful (mostly) unconscious structures can emerge into consciousness, sweep away the central ego, and take over the functioning of the personality. In short this is the borderline personality disorder.

The Trauma Bond

The concept of the ‘trauma bond’ is a popular version of attachment to bad objects, the central concept of Fairbairn’s model. The trauma bond is the result of three factors that have already been discussed.

1. The first is the fixation on the rejecting parent which halts developmental progress. Thus the 14-year-old child who has experienced continuous rejection of his legitimate needs may be fixated emotionally at five or six years old. He is fearful of separation from his needed mother and has little interest in interacting with his peers, because they frighten and intimidate him. All he wants to do is cling to his needed object, in the futile hope that nurturance may be forthcoming. As the child gets older, normal behaviors typical of his age group become more and more difficult, and he becomes socially isolated and withdraws into his inner world of fantasy.
2. The second factor is the attachment between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object. The antilibidinal ego tries with all its might to change, thwart or if all else fails, to get revenge on the rejecting object. As the child develops the ongoing criticism or neglect fills his antilibidinal ego with ever increasing shame and self-hatred, thus further reducing the young adult’s ability to engage with the outer world. This antilibidinal ego has one purpose in life, which is to defeat, expose or reform the hated rejecting object.
3. The third factor in the trauma bond is the strong hope-filled emotional attachment between the libidinal ego and the exciting object. When the Libidinal Ego is dominant, the child is suffused with hope and anticipation that love is just around the corner, and the libidinal ego’s loyalty to the exciting object is redoubled. This false hope keeps him attached to the very parents that failed him.

The combination of these powerful factors- the child’s fixation on the mother as he awaits the support that never comes results in lack of social and emotional development, and the fear of interacting with more mature peers. The intense, mostly unconscious desire to reform or defeat the rejecting object, and at other times, the thrill of anticipation of love from the fantasy exciting object, keeps the individual coming back to the bad object. The focus on the bad object is intense, and other people in the external world make relatively little impact on the child caught in the thrall of the rejecting/exciting object.

Transference and Reenactments

In adulthood the splitting defense sets the borderline up for endless transferences and reenactments. Fairbairn already observed (in 1940) that inner reality could be superimposed upon outer reality. The weak central ego allows external relationships to be seen through the lens of the relationships in the inner world. External objects are seen as rejecting, exciting or as shifting between the two positions. Worse, the individual is actively attracted to others who either promise love and stimulate their libidinal ego or display rejecting behaviors which incites their antilibidinal ego into action. Most enticing are new partners who engage both of the individuals’ structures, as both separate sub-egos require an external partner who shifts in behavior from extremely good (exciting) to extremely bad (rejecting). This allows the individual to re-enact the original relationship established in childhood with a new person. This is the dynamic underlying many battering relationships as well as the dynamic active in those (apparently) functional women who are fascinated by “bad boys”. Other reenactments include men with enraged antilibidinal egos who act out by sabotaging or by passively thwarting their superiors based on their inner world assumption that anyone in power is bound to be a rejecting object.

The Three Relational Pairs of Self and Objects

Central Ego/Ideal Object

As mentioned previously, object relations theory assumes that no sense of self can develop without a relationship to an object. Thus, all three versions of the self develop in relationship to a “different” aspect of the parent (object). In the best of all possible childhoods, the child’s needs for comfort, support, and emotional contact with its object are seldom frustrated and its conscious central ego develops without sub-structures as there is little or no need to split the (Ideal or good) object since there have been few incidents of parental rejection from which the child needs to hide. Thus, there are too few memories of rejection or humiliation to create a strong antilibidinal self and even less reason for a libidinal self. This results in a person who is in good contact with others and with

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consensual reality.

Fairbairn’s Unconscious

The two self and object pairs; the libidinal ego which relates only to the exciting object and antilibidinal ego which relates only to the rejecting object are locked in the timeless unconscious and do not know about or influence the other structures. They are not easily changed by external experience because they project their own template upon reality and repeatedly “see” the same relational pattern over and over again, even when it does not exist. As mentioned earlier Fairbairn’s description of the inner world is an early precursor of a multiple personality disorder. This concept, of separate sealed off part selves that alternate in their dominance (one or the other can become conscious and sweep away the weak central ego) is the key component of modern Fairbairnian theory.

The Antilibidinal Self (Ego) and its Relationship to the Rejecting Object

The rejecting object is not a moral judgment but rather a measure of the child’s experience. The mother who is hospitalized and is unavailable to meet her child’s needs is a rejecting object. The child’s antilibidinal ego perceives the rejecting object to be completely and eternally bad, with no possibility of change in the future. This structure is not only filled with rage, pain, and shame for being worthless, but equally importantly, an intense desire to reform the rejecting object and turn it into a loving and responsive parent, and failing that, to destroy it. Conversely, the internalized rejecting object can attack the antilibidinal self at any time and will criticize that part-self in the same manner as did the original parent. Later in life, when adults who had frustrating childhoods have children of their own, they often identify with the rejecting object role and force their dependent children into the antilibidinal role. This is reflected in the observation that sooner or later “we all become just like our parents.” Patients frequently misidentify the therapist as a rejecting object and this situation produces a passive aggressive antilibidinal transference.

The Libidinal Ego and its Relationship to the Exciting Object

The libidinal ego is the repository of all the child’s hopes for love and nurturance that are stimulated (but not satisfied) by the parent.  While the libidinal ego is dominant the child will misperceive the parental object (or new adult partner) as being loving, generous and supportive, when in reality the object may be mostly frustrating. Relationship decisions, particularly romantic decisions, made later in life, when the patient is in the thrall of their libidinal ego are often self-destructive, as the libidinal ego cannot see obvious rejecting aspects in their new partner or friends. All the rejecting aspects of the object are split off and repressed in their unconscious, so this structure is operating without important information, and often ends up bitterly disappointed.  The libidinal ego is often called upon during times of crisis, when the individual is unable to bear any awareness of interpersonal abandonment. This extremely powerful defense saves the individual from despair and the overwhelming fear of abandonment, despite the harsh and unloving reality in which they exist.

The Three Sources of Resistance to Treatment

There are three sources of resistance to accepting therapeutic intervention, and the combination of all three can halt progress.

1) The first is the patient’s absolute rejection of exploring the events that actually took place in his childhood as they imply that his whole memory of his childhood is incorrect, and worse that his parents actually hurt him more than they helped him. If the patient is able to accept the reality of what happened, then his whole relationship with his parents (whether they are alive or not) will have to shift radically, and he will have to face life knowing that he cannot safely go to them, or think of them as supportive, loving parents. If they emerge suddenly, such as in a dream, the patient can

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become overwhelmed, as Fairbairn (1943) clearly stated this in the following quote:

There is now little doubt in my mind that … the deepest source of resistances is fear of the release of bad objects from the unconscious; for when such bad objects are released, the world around the patient becomes peopled with devils which are too terrifying to face. (p. 69)

2) The second source of resistance to treatment comes from the structures themselves. As mentioned, children from rejecting families have an overdeveloped antilibidinal ego which has a vendetta to change the mind of the rejecting object, as well as an unrealistic hope filled libidinal ego which keeps fantasizing that there is love and goodness hidden somewhere in the parents.

Fairbairn (1944) spoke directly about these sources of resistance in the following two quotes. The first is the attachment between the libidinal ego and the exciting object, which if severed, would leave the patient in an empty world devoid of love, and the second refers to the hate which motivates the antilibidinal ego to try to reform the rejecting object:

There can be no room for doubt that the obstinate attachment of the libidinal ego to the exciting object and its reluctance to renounce this object constitutes a formidable source of resistance- and one which plays no small part in determining what is known as the negative therapeutic reaction. (p. 117)

The truth is that, however well the fact may be disguised, the individual is extremely reluctant to abandon his original hate, no less than his original need, of his original objects in childhood. (p. 117)

3) The third source of resistance to treatment is transference based on the patient’s projection of his inner world into external reality. For instance, the patient may project his internal rejecting object into the therapist and not see him/her as potentially benevolent, and helpful, rather he may see them as malevolent, critical and attacking.

Fairbairn (1958), in one of his most powerful quotes, describes how the patient tries to see the world from the perspective of his inner structures, and not allow any new relationship to alter this rigid perspective:

Implied in these various manifestations of resistance on the part of the patient is a further defensive aim which I have now come to regard as the greatest of all sources of resistance-viz. the maintenance of the patient’s internal world as a closed system… The maintenance of such a closed system involves the perpetuation of the relationships prevailing between the various ego structures and their respective internal objects, as well as between one another; and since the nature of these relationships is the ultimate source of both symptoms and deviations of character, it becomes still another aim of psycho-analytical treatment to effect breaches of the closed system, which constitutes the patient’s inner world,, and thus to make this world accessible to the influence of outer reality. (p. 380)

Selected Quotes from Fairbairn’s Work

From:  Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality,1952 (Routledge & Kegan Paul) and “On the Nature and Aims of Psycho-Analytical Treatment” (1958, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 39).

On the Source of Human Psychopathology:

Fairbairn stated that the functioning of any given person – normal, neurotic, or psychotic – is dependent on:

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1) The extent to which bad objects have been installed in the unconscious and the degree of badness by which they are characterized.

2) The extent to which the ego is identified with internalized bad objects.

3) The strength of the defenses which protect the ego from these objects (Fairbairn, 1943, 64).

On the Origins of Unresolved Dependency and Developmental Arrest:

“The outstanding feature of infantile dependency is its unconditional character. The infant is completely dependent upon his object not only for his existence and physical wellbeing, but also for the satisfaction of his psychological needs. We also notice that, whereas in the case of an adult the object relationships have a considerable spread, in the case of an infant the focus is on a single object. The loss of an object is thus very more devastating in the case of an infant. If a mature individual loses an object, however important, he still has objects remaining… The infant, on the other hand, has no choice. He has no alternative but to accept or reject his object-an alternative which is liable to present itself to him as a choice between life and death.” (Fairbairn, 1941, 47)

“That early in life they gained the conviction, whether through apparent indifference or through apparent possessiveness on the part of their mother, that their own mother did not really love and value them as a person in their own right, and that influenced by a resultant sense of deprivation and inferiority, they remained profoundly fixated upon their mother.” (Fairbairn, 1940, 23)

“The greatest need of a child is to obtain conclusive assurance (a) that he is genuinely loved as a person by his parents, and (b) that his parents genuinely accept his love. It is only in so far as such assurance is forthcoming in a form sufficiently convincing to enable him to depend safely upon his real objects that he is gradually to renounce infantile dependence without misgiving. In the absence of this reassurance there is too much anxiety over separation to enable him to renounce the attitude of infantile dependence, for such a renunciation would be equivalent in his eyes to forfeiting all hope of ever obtaining the satisfaction of his unsatisfied emotional needs.” (Fairbairn, 1941, 39)

On the Schizoid Defense:

“Among the various characteristics common … to individuals who fall under the schizoid category as now envisaged three are of sufficient prominence to deserve special mention. They are (1) an attitude of omnipotence, (2) an attitude of isolation and detachment, and (3) a preoccupation with inner reality. … So far as the preoccupation with inner reality is concerned, this is undoubtedly the most important of all schizoid characteristics; and it is none the less present whether inner reality be substituted for outer reality, identified with outer reality or superimposed upon outer reality.” (Fairbairn, 1940, 6-7).

On Mature Functioning:

“Mature dependence involves a relationship between two independent individuals who are completely differentiated from one another as mutual objects. …The more mature the relationship, the less it is characterized by primary identification, for what such identification essentially represents is failure to differentiate from the object.” (Fairbairn, 1941, 42)

On the Process of Repression and the Contents of the Human Unconscious:

“I now venture to formulate the view that what are primarily repressed are neither intolerably guilty impulses nor intolerably unpleasant memories, but rather intolerably bad internal objects.”  (Fairbairn, 1943, 62).

“As I now see it, the position is that the victim of a sexual assault resists the revival of the traumatic memory primarily because this memory represents a record of a relationship with a bad object.” (Fairbairn, 1943, 63)

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On Shame and the Dilemma Inherent in Being Dependent and Rejected:

“It is interesting to observe that a relationship with a bad object is felt by the child to be not only intolerable, but also shameful. It may accordingly be inferred that if a child is ashamed of his parents (as is quite often the case) his parents are bad objects to him; and it is in the same direction that we must look for an explanation of the fact that a victim of a sexual assault should feel ashamed of being assaulted. That a relationship with a bad object should be shameful can only be satisfactorily explained on the assumption that in early childhood all object relationships are based on identification.” (Fairbairn, 1943, 64)

“From the latter standpoint, what he experiences is a sense of lack of love, and indeed emotional rejection on his mother’s part. This being so, the expression of hate towards her as a rejecting object becomes in his eyes a very dangerous procedure. On the one hand, it is calculated to make her reject him all the more, and thus increase her badness and make her seem more real in her capacity of bad object. On the other hand, it is calculated to make her love him less, and thus to decrease her “goodness” and make her seem less real in her capacity of good object.” (Fairbairn, 1944, 112-113)

“At the same time, it also becomes a dangerous procedure for the child to express his nascent love for his mother in the face of rejection at her hands: for it is equivalent to discharging libido into an emotional vacuum. Such a discharge is accompanied by an affective experience which is singularly devastating. In the older child this experience is one of intense humiliation of the depreciation of his love, which seems to be involved. At a somewhat deeper level the experience is one of shame over the display of needs which are disregarded or belittled. In virtue of these experiences of humiliation and shame he feels reduced to a state of worthlessness, destitution or ‘beggardom.’” (Fairbairn, 1944, 113)

On the Moral Defense Against Bad Objects:

“This is the major cognitive defense used by children to salvage their relationship with their needed objects. Fairbairn noticed that his abused and abandoned children insisted that they were bad but their parents, who had abused them, were good. He concluded that the children took the “badness” into themselves out of necessity in order to maintain the fiction that their parents were good. In fact, this was the beginning of Fairbairn’s concept of splitting, which he developed fully in his 1944 paper. The child splits himself into a “all bad” position while repressing all of the parental failures, thus keeping them “all good” and preserving his necessary attachment to them.

If the delinquent child is reluctant to admit that his parents are bad objects, he by no means displays equal reluctance to admit that he himself is bad. It becomes obvious, therefore, that the child would rather be bad himself than have bad objects; and accordingly, we have some justification for surmising that one of his motives in becoming bad is to make his objects “good”.  In becoming bad he is really taking upon himself the burden of badness which appears to reside in his objects.” (Fairbairn, 1943, 65)

“Framed in such terms the answer is that it is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil. A sinner in a world ruled by God may be bad; but there is always a certain sense of security to be derived from the fact that the world around is good…In a world ruled by the Devil the individual may escape the badness of being a sinner, but he is bad because the world around him is bad. Further he can have no sense of security and no hope of redemption. The only prospect is one of death and destruction.” (Fairbairn, 1943, 66-67)

On Attachment to Bad Objects:

“If the child’s objects are bad, how does he ever come to internalize them? Why does he not simply reject them as he might reject “bad” corn-flour pudding of “bad” castor oil? … In a word he is “possessed” by them as if by evil spirits. This is not all, however. The child not only internalizes his

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bad objects because they force themselves upon him and he seeks to control them, but also, and above all, because he needs them. If a child’s parents are bad objects, he cannot reject them even if they do not force themselves upon him; for he cannot do without them. Even if they neglect him, he cannot reject them; for if they neglect him, his need for them is increased.” (Fairbairn, 1943, 67)

On the Power of the Relationship with the Therapist as a Good Object:

“It becomes obvious, therefore, that, from a therapeutic standpoint, interpretation is not enough; and it would appear to follow that the relationship existing between the patient and the analyst in the psychoanalytical situation serves purposes additional to that of providing a setting for the interpretation of transference phenomena.  In terms of the object-relations theory of the personality, the disabilities from which the patient suffers represents the effects of unsatisfactory and unsatisfying object- relationships experienced in early life and perpetuated in an exaggerated form in inner reality; and, if this view is correct, the actual relationship existing between the patient and the analyst as persons must be regarded as in itself constituting  a therapeutic factor of prime importance.  The existence of such a personal relationship in outer reality not only serves the function of providing a means of correcting the distorted relationships which prevail inner reality and influence the reactions of the patient to outer objects, but provides the patient an opportunity, denied to him in childhood, to undergo a process of emotional development in the setting of an actual relationship with a reliable and beneficent parental figure.” (Fairbairn, 1958, 377)

“Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that such results must be attributed, in part at least, to the fact that in the transference situation the patient is provided with an unwontedly good object and is thereby placed in a position to risk a release of his internalized bad objects from the unconscious and so to provide conditions for the libidinal cathexis of these objects to be dissolved.” (Fairbairn, 1943, 69)

“The moral would seem to be that the appeal of a good object is an indispensable factor in promoting a dissolution of the cathexis of internalized bad objects, and that the significance of the transference situation is partly derived from this fact.” (Fairbairn, 1943, 74)

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This conference handout was being utilized for the following continuing education courses and seminars taught by the author at the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis:

2/2/2025: The Impact of Early Family Relationships on Child Development: A Fairbairnian Perspective

1/10/2025 – 2/14/2025: Clinical Supervision Informed by W.R.D. Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory

9/22/2024: The Dissociation of Childhood Abuse as the Antecedent of the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: A Fairbairnian Analysis

4/7/2024: Bringing Fairbairn’s Structural Theory into the Consulting Room to Meet Your Patient

10/08/2023: Childhood Trauma and Psychological Development of a Mass Murderer Through the Lens of Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory

6/11/2023: An Object Relations Approach to Parent-Child Interactions That Impact the Child’s Emotional Development

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6/10/2023: An Object Relations Approach to Parent-Child Interactions That Impact the Child’s Emotional Development

10/02/2022: Fairbairn’s Paradigm Shift to Developmental Model of Psychoanalysis as a Method and a Clinical Tool

5/15/2022: Application of Fairbairn’s Structural Metaphors for Diagnosis and Treatment of Personality Disorders: Hysteric, Obsessive, Narcissistic, and Borderline

9/26/2021: Childhood trauma and psychological development of a mass murderer through the lens of Fairbairn’s Object Relations theory

10/08/2020-12/17/2020: Ronald Fairbairn’s Psychoanalytic Model of the Human Psyche and Its Clinical Applications

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