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FAIRBAIRN'S STRUCTURAL THEORY
The ego and by following Groddeck in calling the other part of the mind into which this entity extends and which behaves as though it were Ucs. (unconscious) the id.” 21. Freud, “The Instincts and their Vicissitudes”, in On Metapsychology, Penguin, 1984, p.118. Freud, “The Unconscious”, in On Metapsychology,. Freud’s successors. Her approach, which is the dominant but not the only one informing this paper, emphasizes the formative impact of relations with others for the development of a person’s mental personality, at the expense of Freud’s own tendency to emphasize instincts and desires. Objects, in Klein’s conceptualization, are symbolic. Full text of 'An Outline Of Psychoanalysis Revised Edition' See other formats.
Richard L. Rubens, Ph.D.
Beginning in the early 1940's, W. Ronald D. Fairbairn developed a unique psychoanalytic theory that anticipated and laid the groundwork for some of the most important current theoretical advancements in psychoanalysis. At the heart of Fairbairn's theory was a notion of endopsychic structure based directly on the vicissitudes of human object relatedness --in a way so radically different from other theories of his time that it is only now, a half-century later, that his ideas are finally having their appropriately profound influence on the general spectrum of psychoanalytic thinking.
In an earlier paper (Rubens, 1984), I advanced the position that Fairbairn had not been studied as widely and thoroughly as might be expected due to the extent to which his ideas depart from classical analytic theory. While increasingly many psychoanalysts had been drawn to Fairbairn's insights into the nature of human interactions and their implications for clinical practice, surprisingly few allowed themselves even to realize the extent to which these insights were based on a radically novel understanding of the human psyche --and fewer still could recognize and acknowledge the full implications of his departures.
It was my contention that it was Fairbairn's complete rejection of Freud's structural theory (and the drive model it embodied) that explained this almost phobic avoidance of the deeper implications of Fairbairn's ideas. The theory of structure is the key issue in defining psychoanalysis in general, and in distinguishing between psychoanalytic theories in particular. Thus, to accept Fairbairn's theory in the fullness of its structural divergence from Freud was to abandon Freud in too radical a way for many psychoanalysts. Also, most psychoanalysts had been so habitually attached to speaking in terms of Freud's tripartite division of the psyche into id, ego, and superego that they failed to notice that this structural theory was based on metapsychological assumptions that they themselves no longer in fact adhered to.
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the viability --and even necessity-- of alternatives to the metapsychological assumptions embodied in Freud's structural theory. This change is expressed in the perspective developed by Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) that there are two, very different basic models on which psychoanalytic theories are based:
The most significant tension in the history of psychoanalytic ideas has been the dialectic between the original Freudian model, which takes as its starting point the instinctual drives, and a comprehensive model initiated in the works of Fairbairn and Sullivan, which evolve structure solely from the individual's relations with other people. Accordingly, we designate the original model the drive/structure model and the alternative perspective the relational/structure model. (p. 20)
Mitchell (1988, p. 18) describes Fairbairn as one of the 'purest representatives' of this relational/structure model.
Although a very large percentage of modern psychoanalysts actually have underlying assumptions far more consistent with those of the relational/structure model, there remains a tremendous inertia toward preserving a connection to the drive/structure model --or, at least, utilizing the terminology of that model.
The typical use which has previously been made of Fairbairn's ideas has been to note their relevance to early development and to those conditions most directly deriving from these stages (i.e., schizoid, narcissistic, and borderline states), while maintaining that the later developments can still be satisfactorily described employing the traditional drive/structure model. Even British object-relations theorists such as Winnicott (1965) have attempted to retain their connection to classical theory through just this sort of adherence to the importance of the drive/structure model in later development. Mitchell (1988) provides a brilliant discussion of the shortcomings of this manoeuvre, which he terms 'developmental tilt.' (pp. 136 ff.)
Freud Instincts And Their Vicissitudes Pdf Merger
Fairbairn himself, while radically departing from Freud's metapsychological assumptions, was nevertheless guilty of employing terms taken too directly from the language of drive theory. He repeatedly utilized terms like 'ego' and 'libidinal' in crucial positions in his theories, although they bear virtually no similarity to their original meanings in Freud. Even his use of the term 'object' is misleading, since it does not begin to convey how extensively it departs from the drive/structure model's concept of object. Although careful to redefine his use of such terms, Fairbairn's use of the language of drive theory did introduce a great deal of confusion into the understanding of his work --and a considerable opportunity for avoiding the full impact of its novelty.
Nevertheless, Fairbairn did succeed in completely abandoning Freud's structural model. Moreover, in a still more radical way, he developed a new structural theory based on a very different notion of the psyche and of the underlying meaning and role of structure within it. It is only in recent years that psychoanalysis has finally begun to incorporate directly the full implications and novelty of Fairbairn's theoretical innovations.
This paper will attempt to explore the actual extent of Fairbairn's departure from traditional notions of psychic structure by a detailed explication of his own theory of endopsychic structure in light of the assumptions out of which it was developed and the clinical implications which derive from it.
The Basic Nature of the Self
Fairbairn viewed people as being object-related by their very nature. For him, the fundamental unit of consideration was that of a self in relation to an other --and the nature of the relationship in between. Personhood, in the external world, essentially and definitionally involves relationship with other people. Internally considered, the self therefore is to be understood as always existing in and defined in terms of the relationships it has, remembers, desires, or creates. In the relational/structure model of Fairbairn, the shape of the self grows and changes from its experience in relationships, while at the same time the nature of the relationships it has are being shaped and changed by that self.
Fairbairn's theory gives appropriately great weight to the significance of intrapsychic functioning. Unlike some interpersonal theories, it is no way guilty of naively reducing the study of the human psyche to a mere examination of external relationships. His relational/structure model provides room for the most extensive and rich of notions of inner world. Furthemore, as will be discussed below, Fairbairn viewed the self not simply as the result of experience, but rather as the precondition for it. In an irreducible way, the self is the pre-existent starting point for all experience and provides continuity in all that develops later --coloring and shaping all subsequent experience. On the other hand, Fairbairn firmly maintained that it was in relationship to others that the self expresses its selfhood and is shaped in the course of its development. Fairbairn's theory of self is, therefore, 'relational' in precisely the way described by Mitchell (1988), in which
the interpersonal and the intrapsychic realms create, interpenetrate, and transform each other in a subtle and complex manner. (p. 9)
It is the self in its relationship to the other that constitutes the only meaningful unit of consideration for Fairbairn. This unit of self, other, and the relationship in between becomes the pattern for Fairbairn's understanding of the form of all subsystems within the self.
The Inseparability of Energy and Structure
Central to Freud's conception of the organization of the psyche is the primary existence of an energic, chaotic entity, the id, the fundamental principle of which being the immediate and indiscriminate discharge of its stimulus-related and endogenous excitation, and the subsequent evolution of a highly structured ego, adaptively derived to mediate contact between the psyche's energic underpinnings in the id and the realities of the external world (Freud, 1900, 1923, 1933). In this way, Freud separated the structure for achieving self expression from that energy within the self which strives to be expressed.
Fairbairn adopted as his most fundamental postulate the notion that structure and energy were inseparable: 'both structure divorced from energy and energy divorced from structure are meaningless concepts' (Fairbairn, 1952, p. 149). The structure is that which gives form to the energy, and the energy does not exist without a particular form. For him, 'impulses' (a term he characteristically set off in quotation marks to indicate his discomfort with this notion of energy treated as through it possessed some independent and separate existence)
cannot be considered apart from the endopsychic structures which they energize and the object relationships which they enable these structures to establish; and, equally, 'instincts' cannot profitably be considered as anything more than forms of energy which constitute the dynamic of such endopsychic structures (p. 85).
In Fairbairn's system, the structure for achieving self expression is inextricably interrelated with that which strives for expression. The self is simultaneously structure and energy, inseparable and mutually inter-defining.
The Object-Related Nature of the Self
Even in Freud's late description of the id (1933), the reservoir of energy within the psyche was seen as seeking at all times the reduction of tension through the immediate and indiscriminate discharge of its energy. This pattern was termed by Freud the pleasure principle. In it, there is virtually no consideration of the object towards which this discharge takes place. The pleasure principle was seen by Freud as being developmentally prior to operation in accordance with the reality principle --a mode more co-ordinated with the specific nature of the world of external objects and involving delay of gratification, planning, and purposive awareness of cause and effect and of future consequence.
Fairbairn (1952, pp. 149f.) understood Freud's position to be a direct consequence of his divorcing of energy from structure, for what goal could there be for structureless, directionless energy other than indiscriminate discharge for the purpose of homeostasis. For Fairbairn, having initially postulated the inseparability of energy and structure, it followed that the goal (or aim) of self-expression could no longer be viewed as mere tension reduction (the discharge of energy, ending the 'unpleasure' of excitation and thereby definitionally resulting in pleasure) with little or no reference to the object by means of which this discharge is accomplished. Rather he completely inverted Freud's position, maintaining that relationship with the object was itself the goal, and that the pleasure involved was a secondary consequence. Thus he wrote that, 'The function of libidinal pleasure is essentially to provide a signpost to the object' (1952, p. 33), and that 'The real libidinal aim is the establishment of satisfactory relationship with objects' (p. 138).
To Fairbairn, the pleasure principle, rather than being the universal first principle of self expression, 'represents a deterioration of behaviour' (1952, p. 139). The rightful mode of libidinal expression, at all developmental levels, is more closely related to that described by Freud as the reality principle, at least in so far as this expression is seen as always purposively intending towards relationship with objects in some realistic way, rather than towards pleasure itself:
Explicit pleasure-seeking has as its essential aim the relieving of the tension of libidinal need for the mere sake of relieving this tension. Such a process does, of course, occur commonly enough; but, since libidinal need is object need, simple tension-relieving implies some failure of object-relationships (p. 140).
Central to this theory is the concept that human beings do not naturally operate with the goal of reducing tensions, but rather with the goal of self expression in relationships with other human beings. This view of fundamental human motivation is one of Fairbairn's most important contributions to contemporary relational theory.
Unitary and Dynamic Origin of the Psyche
Fairbairn maintained that the genesis of the human psyche lay in 'an original and single dynamic ego-structure present at the beginning' (1952, p. 148); or, as he wrote elsewhere, 'The pristine personality of the child consists of a unitary dynamic ego' (1954, p. 107). The individual elements of these statements are important enough to the theory to merit expansion and explication.
It is first necessary to note again that Fairbairn's use of the term 'ego' is in no way equivalent to Freud's structural use of the term. Rather, it refers to the entirety of the psychic self. In adopting this connotation of 'ego,' Fairbairn is closely paralleling Freud's use of the term prior to his writing TheEgoandtheId. As Strachey (1961) points out, Freud in this period used the term to apply to the whole of a person's self. Nevertheless, it would be better if Fairbairn had substituted 'self' for 'ego' to distinguish his usage from Freud's. To minimize any possibility for confusion, and to emphasize the differences inherent in Fairbairn's conception, I have utilized 'self' rather than 'ego' wherever practical.
That Fairbairn refers to this primitive state as a 'dynamic ego-structure' or 'dynamic ego' follows directly from his postulate of the inseparability of energy and structure. He could not posit, as had Freud, an unstructured supply of energy out of which an adaptive structure would subsequently develop. Rather he insisted on the innate structural integrity of the self: the self was a 'singular' and 'unitary' whole. Further, this self was the apriori condition of life experience: 'original' and 'pristine', it existed from the very outset and was not in any way dependent upon experience for its existence.
Combining these notions with Fairbairn's idea that psychic energy is object-seeking, the resulting conception of the psyche is that of a self-generated, unitary center of definition and energy, with the potential for, and the drive toward, self-expression outward into the object world, and the potential for experiencing that world, its own self-expression, and the resulting interaction between the two.
The Nature of Endopsychic Structure
The self as it has been described above requires no further structural development. It begins in a condition of wholeness, already capable of and actively involved in the self-defining processes of self-expression and of experience. While this assertion naturally does not imply that the capacities of this primitive self are fully matured, it does insist that they are all present at least in seminal form.
Fairbairn acknowledged that structural differentiation in fact does occur within the psyche --and even that it is unavoidable and universal (1954, p. 107). The substructures resulting from such differentiations he saw as modelled after the self as a whole: each is comprised of an element of self in energic, affective relationship with an element of the object world. He termed these resultant substructures of the self 'endopsychic structures.'
Fairbairn noted (1952, Chapter 4) that certain unavoidable features of early human experience lead universally to the establishment of two such endopsychic structures: the first formed around the experience of the self in intolerably exciting relationship, and the second formed around intolerably rejecting relationship.
He understood that each of these subsystems of the self represents a particular crystallization of what originally was the growing and continually self-defining process of the self as a whole. Whereas the original self is in ongoing and essentially unbounded relationship with the outside world as a whole, such an endopsychic structure is a particularized aspect of that self, in specific relationship with a particular aspect of the object world. Fairbairn eventually came to realize (1952, p. 158) that it was the entirety of such a subsystem which constituted the endopsychic structure set up within the self. The first of the two such endopsychic structures referred to in the preceding paragraph will here be termed the Libidinal Self, as Fairbairn never developed an explicit terminology to refer to the entirety of the subsystem composed of what he termed the Libidinal Ego in specific relationship to what he called the Exciting Object. Similarly, the second subsystem will be termed the Antilibidinal Self (following Fairbairn's later terminology for the Internal Saboteur and its Rejecting Object).
The third element in Fairbairn's picture of the structurally differentiated psyche will here be termed the Central Self, consisting of Fairbairn's Central Ego in relationship with the Idealized Object. This entity is what remains of the original self after the other two parts have been separated off. Because of this unique aspect of its origin, as well as for other differences discussed below, the Central Self is not an 'endopsychic structure' in the same sense as the other two entities.
The fact that Fairbairn's model of endopsychic structure is tripartite naturally invites comparisons to Freud's structural model --and, of course, certain congruence is to be expected, since both metapsychological models attempt to describe the same clinical phenomena. Nevertheless, Fairbairn repeatedly rejected such comparisons (1952, pp. 106 f., 148, etc.).
Freud's ego rather closely corresponds to the 'ego' component of Fairbairn's Central Self, in that the ego is the organization of purposive self-expression and experience in relationship with the external world. It was viewed by Freud as a derivative structure, however, and not as the original structure Fairbairn viewed as the source of all other endopsychic structures. It must be agreed, that, as Kernberg (1980, p. 81) maintains, the ego psychologists' notion of an undifferentiated ego-id matrix existing prior to the emergence of either individual structure furthers the Freudian model in a direction more consonant with that of Fairbairn. Nevertheless, the ego-psychological viewpoint still posits the eventual developmental necessity of the progressive structural differentiation of the ego from the id. In so doing, it clearly differs from Fairbairn's understanding of structure. Furthermore, the metapsychological foundations of the ego-psychological view still rest on a drive/structure model --albeit one that recognizes the central importance of relationship in achieving this end-- whereas Fairbairn's metapsychology is founded on the need for self-expression in relationship.
The differences become more striking in comparisons drawn with the other two endopsychic structures. The Libidinal Ego, while certainly id-like in many aspects of its functioning, is consistently viewed by Fairbairn as existing in dynamic relationship with the Exciting Object; and the Libidinal Self which is constituted by this relationship is a proper subsystem of the Self, in that it is specifically object-related in a manner foreign to the concept of the id. The Libidinal Self represents a particularized relation of a specific aspect of the self in relationship with a specific aspect of the object world, and not the more generalized, freely displaceable and mutable energic center which the id is conceived as being. The superego is somewhat related to the Rejecting Object of the Antilibidinal Self, although not coterminous with it.
The Rejecting Object does contain the more archaic elements of the superego, although the moral aspects of superego functioning are related more to the relationship with the Idealized Object which occurs in the Central Self and to what Fairbairn discussed as the mechanism of the moral defense. Moreover, the superego concept emphasizes the object component of the Antilibidinal Self, and not the Antilibidinal Ego component --it therefore being necessary to include the ego's relationship with the superego to make a more appropriate comparison.
The ego-psychological branch of object relations theory (most ably represented by Jacobson and Kernberg) has attempted, with considerable success, to transform Freud's metapsychology in a direction more consonant with the insights of Fairbairn. Yet it is not possible fully to incorporate Fairbairn's insights without abandoning central tenets of Freud's metapsychology, contrary to the claim to this effect made by Kernberg (1980).
Freud's structural model simply is not the same as Fairbairn's system of Central, Libidinal, and Antilibidinal Selves. Nor do the modifications introduced by Ego Psychology suffice to make Fairbairn's system subsumable under their revised drive/structure model. In the first place, the 'self-component' of endopsychic structures is not the equivalent of 'what we would now call a self-representation', as Kernberg claims (1980, p. 81). One of the most brilliant of Fairbairn's insights lies precisely in his recognition that the self --and not some ideational representation (for who, in that case, would be the one doing the representing?)-- has as its primary, innate function active expression in the form of relationship with the object world --and not, until the intervention of some pathological process, with some ideational representation thereof! To alter this conception is to eschew the most essential thrust of Fairbairn's theory.
It is precisely Kernberg's refusal to acknowledge this difference which leads him to cite the criticism put forth by Winnicott & Khan (1953) of Fairbairn's concept of primary identification (which he described as a relationship between the self and object which has not been differentiated from it):
If the object is not differentiated it cannot operate as an object. What Fairbairn is referring to then is an infant with needs, but with no 'mechanism' by which to implement them, an infant not 'seeking' an object, but seeking de-tension, libido seeking satisfaction, instinct tension seeking a return to a state of rest or un-excitement; which brings us back to Freud(p. 332).
The self in Fairbairn's theory is a living, growing, self-defining center which he viewed as the point of origin of human psychic process; and, it follows directly from this most basic of principles that it is possible for such a self to have relationships with other human beings, even though they have not yet representationally differentiated as objects separate from the self. Initially this self relates to the world with little basis in experience for self-object differentiation. Nevertheless, it does express itself and experience the world in a manner that is precisely the prototype for all later activities of the self. To assert that this brings Fairbairn's theory back to the pleasure principle of Freud is totally to miss his point.
It is an actual fragment of the self, and not a representation of it, which comprises the essence of an endopsychic structure in Fairbairn's theory. As a subsystem of the self, such a structure is a purposive entity with its own energy. It is not reducible, as Kernberg (1980) suggests it is, to self and object representations energized by 'an activation of affects reflecting...drives in the context of internal object relations' (p. 80). Such a view is quite closely related to Freud's drive/structure model, modified to include the notion of the expression of drive derivatives in object-relational constellations --but is not at all the same as Fairbairn's relational/structure model.
The Libidinal and Antilibidinal Selves differ from the original self in only two ways. The first difference is that each is a crystallization of what in the original self was a more freely developing potentiality. Whereas the original self (and later the Central Self, in a more limited way) was free to experience the world and express itself in relationships to that world, the subsidiary selves carry within them a pre-existing template (based on the experiences out of which they were formed) for particularized relationships with specific aspects of the world. As in the case of the Central Self, the Libidinal and Antilibidinal Selves continue to seek experience and self-expression through relationship. In the case of the Libidinal and Antilibidinal Selves, however, this process is sharply restricted by the fact that the particularized crystallization involved in the formation of each structure tends to permit only that experience and expression which is fundamentally consonant with the specific template involved. Thus, while there is a certain amount of growth within these subsidiary self systems, it is minimal. This limitation on the growth and change of the Libidinal and Antilibidinal Selves is more potently enforced by the factor which is the second way in which they differ from the original self, and later from the Central Self; they were created in an act of repression and at all times continue under the pressure of this repression.
Introjection is a psychoanalytic concept referring to the psychic process whereby objects from the external world – prototypically parental objects – are taken into the ego, internalized. It is most frequently defined in opposition to projection – the expulsion of unpleasant impulses, often through negation or repudiation – and usually denotes a merging with the object, a movement from difference and distinctness to sameness; as such, introjection is closely associated with psychoanalytic formulations of identification (see Freud, 1921, pp. 47–53). Introjection is a phantasmatic process – it is not real objects that are taken in – that finds its bodily analogue in orality, ingestion, as opposed to excretion. At a basic level, then, it is through introjection that a subject is able to assert, “I am like this” (I have taken this in, I am identified with it), and through projection, “I am not like that” (I have spat that out, excreted it) (Freud, 1925).
The two processes of...