[6] Alongside the Kleinians the "Middle Group" represented 'the other division of psychoanalysts who use "object-relations" theory', and for some 'has formed the central core of the British Psychoanalytical Society...interprets in terms of either the Oedipal or the pre-Oedipal relationship'.
[7] D. W. Winnicott was arguably 'for many years the most prominent member of the Independent Group in the British Psycho-Analytical Society, and as such in complete opposition to both classical analysis and Kleinian theory...but he consistently denied that he was its leader'.
[8] Certainly, among the Independents, 'the four British psychoanalysts who by their writing and teaching have had the biggest influence on psychoanalysis...are Ronald Fairbairn, Michael Balint, John Bowlby, and Donald Winnicott....Related ideas have been developed and applied by such writers as Marion Milner and Charles Rycroft'.
'British object relations theory influenced North American psychoanalysis over the last thirty years'[16] of the twentieth century to an ever-increasing degree, beginning with figures like Arnold Modell, Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg.
[22] There is, however, growing recognition in psychodynamic psychotherapy of the benefits of 'draw[ing] on several theoretical models, reflecting the pluralism in the field today', as well as of the way 'the therapist's personality places a personal stamp on the therapy conducted'[23] – thereby strengthening the Independent Group's awareness that the therapist, 'to encompass the diversity of clinical phenomena that will be encountered...cannot afford to be too monogamously wedded to one particular theory'.