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9780231149075: Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting
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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.

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About the Author:
David P. Celani is a licensed psychologist who practiced for more than twenty-five years in Burlington, Vermont. In treatment, he focused on his patients' "attachment to bad objects," which was manifested by their inability to separate from parents, friends, or marital partners who demeaned, criticized, or abused them. Celani now presents workshops throughout the United States on object relations theory. His books with Columbia University Press include The Illusion of Love: Why the Battered Woman Returns to Her Abuser and Leaving Home: The Art of Separating from Your Difficult Family.
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Excerpt from Chapter 3: The Dynamic Relationships Between the Pathological Ego Structures

This chapter focuses on Fairbairn's four pathological self and object structures, with an emphasis on understanding patient productions during the clinical interview. When working with patients suffering from severe splits in their ego structures, it is critical to know which subego or internalized object is dominant. The discussion begins with a description of each ego structure and then the relationship of each to its object partner. This is followed by an examination of the four fundamental relational patterns of transference that can emerge between patient and therapist, along with techniques that can be used to soften the patient's rigid adherence to her inner structures. The chapter continues with a lengthy discussion of the reemergence of dissociated material from the antilibidinal ego, and with therapeutic strategies that foster its integration into the central ego. Finally, the negative therapeutic reaction is examined in terms of Fairbairn's inner structures.

The four internal ego structures are not composed of hundreds of separate actual interpersonal events that are sequentially dissociated and held in the unconscious. Rather, they are complex views of the object over time that are melded together and modified by the child's fantasies and fears that were appropriate to the age at which the dissociation took place:

"It is important however to keep in mind that these constellations do not represent a simple internalization of an actual experience with an external person. They are multilayered representations built up at different levels of development over the years as the growing person takes in the experience of relationships as modified by his own fantasies and by the limited ability to understand that which was present during the particular stage of development at the time of each experience."

Thus each of the four structures is complex; each is a limited sub-personality with a distinct view of the world as well as the ability to plan and make decisions, and each can become the dominant ego directing the patient's life.

The Antilibidinal Ego

Although my effort here is to focus on the antilibidinal ego, it is impossible to speak of one structure without referring to the others, as seen in chapter 2. It may seem difficult at first for the clinician to differentiate the antilibidinal ego from the rejecting object. However, they are vastly different and play distinct roles in the interior world, as well as in the transference relationship. The fundamental difference between these two structures is that the rejecting object attacks, demeans, and humiliates the antilibidinal ego from a position of power, and its rejection can be absolute. The antilibidinal ego is the self of the developing child that relates exclusively to the rejecting object, and its response to these attacks are self-hate, shame, and sarcasm toward those in power, which often manifests later in life as a self-righteous condemnation of those who have failed in their assigned role (as parent, leader, or authority). In some cases, this amounts to "whining" and chronic complaining about the failures of their objects, whereas in other patients it can take the form of an interpersonal revenge-based "crusade" against the specific objects or a displaced group of objects, one that takes on the emotionality of a religious war. I turn now to an example from Fairbairn's 1954 paper on hysteria, cited previously (Celani 2001), that clearly demonstrates that Fairbairn saw patients with exactly the same type of relationship between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object as we see in our patients today. The exceptional aspect about this passage is that the patient is actually thought to be the analyst Harry Guntrip, whom, as noted, Fairbairn treated in analysis:

"In his inner world he was constantly engaged in an argument with his mother over his right to possess a penis and to use it as he wished -- a right which, in the light of his mother's reactions (to which reference has already been made), he felt that she denied to him. This imagined argument with his mother assumed the essential form of an attempt on his part to convert her to a "belief in penises," in place of the hatred of penises which he attributed to her (not without reason). More specifically, he sought to persuade her to accept his own penis, and to give him permission to use it: for, in his bondage to her, he felt that he did not dare to use his penis without her permission -- except in secret masturbation, about which he felt extremely guilty. (Fairbairn 1954:34)"

This is a classic example of a relationship characterized by "whining" and complaining between the child's antilibidinal ego and the rejecting aspect of the maternal object. Here the antilibidinal ego is engaged in a lobbying effort to reform the position taken by the all-powerful and implacable rejecting object. Once the relationship between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object is internalized, neither structure is able to assimilate information from the external world that might modify its position. I have noted earlier that Fairbairn did not see the hostile and antagonistic relationship between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object. He mistook the relationship between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object as a cooperative one, in which the antilibidinal ego does the bidding of the rejecting object, yet this example from his own work illustrates just the opposite. Here the patient's antilibidinal ego is pleading and lobbying for permission and understanding of his legitimate needs from his insensitive parental object. The flaws in Fairbairn's original understanding of the dynamics between the internal structures blinded him to the therapeutic possibilities of working to counteract the self-defeating and rigid relationship between these structures.

Odgen (1990) has also written of the antagonism between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object. He noted that the struggle between theses structures is never won, as they fight each other to an eternal "draw":

"The suborganization identified with the object is under constant pressure from the self component of the relationship to be transformed into a good object. Such a transformation is strenuously resisted by the object component, because this type of massive shift in identity would be experienced as an annihilation of an aspect of the ego. The internal object relationship is vigorously defended from two directions: The self-component is unwilling to risk annihilation resulting from absence of object relatedness and instead strives to change the bad object into a good one; at the same time, the object component fends off annihilation that would result from being transformed into a new entity (the good object)"

Ironically, Odgen is a Kleinian and Winicottian, and yet he is one of the few writers in the field who has described the struggle between these antagonistic components in Fairbairn's structural model. The powerful, yet often pathetic and neglectful, parental object, who has been internalized as the rejecting object, maintains its enormous status in the inner world because the child's infantile antilibidinal ego needs the rejecting object to become a good object and act as the catalyst for its development. This is a task in which the rejecting object steadfastly refuses to participate. The child's antilibidinal ego's total dependence on the rejecting object keeps it forever responding to this antagonistic inner structure, which never loses its potency. In some patients, the antilibidinal ego gives up trying to reform the bad object and switches to a strategy of exposing the bad object parent to the public. Like the snake and the mongoose, these two structures simply cannot leave each other alone.

One of the most striking characteristics of the antilibidinal ego is its self-righteous desire for revenge and its demand for reparation for the hurts it has suffered. I am not exaggerating when I say that some borderline individuals have spent most of their lives demanding, in various impotent and self-defeating ways, that their original parental objects are somehow "charged" with violations of the parent--child contract. Ogden (1990), who colorfully describes the antilibidinal ego as the "wronged and spoiling self," emphasizes the actions of the antilibidinal ego in the inner world; however, when this subego becomes the dominant ego, it often attempts to expose the parental object's badness in the external world as well: "The second category of bond to a bad internal object is the tie of the wronged and spoiling self to the unloving, rejecting object. This often takes the form of a crusade to expose the unfairness of, coldness of, or other forms of wrongdoing on the part of the internal object" (156).

The antilibidinal ego has a sense of purpose and direction, and consequently its antagonistic relationship to the internalized rejecting object is easily projected onto objects in external reality. As we will see, the intensity of the relationship between the part-self and part-object structure causes the antilibidinal ego to feel that it is engaged in a self-righteous mission, which forecloses the intrusion of external objects into this meaningful and intensely emotional internal world. Kopp (1978), an existential psychologist whom I have previously quoted (Celani 2005), illustrates this aspect of the antilibidinal ego:

"Imagining themselves to be the heroes or heroines of as yet uncompleted fairy tales, such people simply cannot (will not) believe that the villains who have disappointed them will go unpunished, or that they themselves will remain blameless yet uncompensated victims. Surely there must be someone who will avenge them, and take good care of them, someone who will right the family wrongs and reward the good children."

Perfectly captured here is the tone of one of the most com...

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