William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn (/ˈfɛərbɛərn/) FRSE (11 August 1889 – 31 December 1964) was a Scottish psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and a central figure in the development of the Object Relations Theory of psychoanalysis.

The importance of Fairbain's work lies both in its direct challenge to Freud's model of psychoanalysis, and as the origin of many fundamental concepts that are currently part of Object Relations Theory.

Fairbairn's model also shifts the focus away from repression (of the Id's forbidden sexual and aggressive desires) and back to dissociation as the fundamental defense mechanism used by the human psyche.

If the experience is either prolonged, [sic] assaultively violent, or if self-development is weak or immature, then the level of affective arousal is too great for the event to be experienced self-reflectively and given meaning through cognitive processing.

… At its extreme, the subjective experience is that of a chaotic and terrifying flooding of affect that threatens to overwhelm sanity and psychological survival Not all interpersonal trauma is as dramatic as Bromberg notes in the prior quote.

The schizoid style of relating (or more accurately, non-relating) to others originates from repeated rejections of the child's legitimate need for love and emotional support during his developmental years.

It may be carried to a point at which all emotional and physical contacts with other persons are renounced; and it may even go so far that all libidinal links with outer reality are surrendered, all interest in the world around fades and everything becomes meaningless.

He noted that human development was characterized by a gradual differentiation (separation both physically and psychologically) from the parent because of the emergence of a constantly maturing, reality oriented "central ego" in the young adult.

In the absence of such assurance his relationships to his objects is fraught with 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.

In either case, they have been unable to enter mature relationships because they are still immature, withdrawn and fixated on their rejecting parent, forever seeking the support and encouragement that they missed out on in childhood (Celani, 2005).

He then formally re-defined the human unconscious, not as a container of biological drives, but rather as a compendium of memories of interpersonal events that were too destructive to the child's attachment to his parents for his developing ego to accept.

Fairbairn's 1943 paper offered the reader a logical pathway for dissociated memories of neglect and abuse to become the foundation of the human unconscious and the seeds of adult psychopathology in the following passage.

Fairbairn also noticed that children who had been removed from their families because of extreme neglect or abuse (this was in Scotland during the 1930s) made endless excuses for their parents and assumed that they themselves were responsible for the treatment that they were receiving.

Their unmet dependency needs have prevented them from passing through the normal developmental steps, and they are completely unprepared to work for others, tolerate demands placed on them, interact with new people, and participate cooperatively.

The influence of a good object therapist should provoke a derepression (a release from the unconscious) of the memories of abuse and neglect that were previously unavailable to his conscious central ego.

Later on the next page he ends his comment on resistance with the statement: "It becomes evident, accordingly, that the psychotherapist is the true successor to the exorcist, and that he is concerned, not only with "the forgiveness of sins", but also with "the casting out of devils" (Fairbairn, 1952, p. 70).

Fairbairn's 1944 paper introduced the psychoanalytic community to his alternative view of the structure of the human personality which he saw as being the result of dissociation of intolerably frustrating experiences with the individuals parents.

Fairbairn's work in an orphanage convinced him that children separated from their families had experienced a major trauma that required the dissociative defense to prevent a complete psychic collapse.

The rejecting object and the internal saboteur are determined to nurse their feelings of having been deeply wronged, cheated, humiliated, betrayed, exploited, treated unfairly, discriminated against, and so on.

He sees the effects of psychotherapy as decreasing the two sub-egos because the central ego develops strength due to its acceptance of the therapist as a good and reliable object, and it can now tolerate some or most of the painful realities of his/her childhood.

And, finally, my object relations theory of the personality is intended to replace Freud's description of the mental constitution in terms of the id, the ego and the superego(Fairbairn, 1958, p.374).

[26]This summary quote consigned the study of Fairbairn's work to those few scholars who were interested in the development of analytic concepts, but it was completely ignored by mainstream practitioners of the craft.

As has been previously described, Fairbairn saw psychopathology as being based on the splitting of the original ego into smaller, specialized sub-egos that both minimized parental failures or, offered hope to the child in truly hopeless families.

The "new light" is the application of adult logic to previously split off memories that were "primitive" (filled with emotion and not understood by the individual) and an acceptance of what once happened without the helpless rage and despair of a needy infant or toddler (Celani, 2010).

In terms of the theory of the mental constitution which I have proposed, 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 make this world accessible to the influence of outer reality (italics in the original) (Fairbairn, 1958, p.

This is why many narcissists work so hard on their athletic performances, seek financial success or social prominence, so their libidinal ego can bask in the praise from their exciting object.

The narcissist has to both maintain his grandiose view of himself (who is perfect and needs no one) and simultaneously has to avoid ever remembering the split off traumas of their childhood, as Mitchell notes in the following quote.

Based on the illusions of self-sufficiency and perfection of the grandiose self, they undercut the vary basis on which the psychoanalytic process rests, the presumption that the analysand might gain something meaningful from someone else (in this case the analyst).

The analyst and his interpretations must be continually devalued, spoiled, to avoid catapulting the patient into a condition of overpowering longing, abject dependency and intolerable hatred and envy (Mitchell, 1986, p.

[33]The patient is not only unwilling to give up his superior-grandiose-position but his unconscious is also populated with so many toxic memories of parental failures and neglect that the cure is not worth the additional trauma inherent in psychological exploration.