From Instinct to Self: Selected Papers of W. R. D. Fairbairn, Vol. 1: Clinical and Theoretical Papers

From Instinct to Self

by David E. Scharff (Editor), Ellinor Fairbairn Birtles (Editor)

Ronald Fairbairn's theory of object relations, first published in the 1940s, revolutionized psychoanalysis. Countering Freud's view that the developmental drive emerged almost solely from within an individual, Fairbairn argued that each person;s fundamental need for relationships organizes development and its vicissitudes. In the ensuing years, frequently without attribution to Fairbairn, object relations theory became central to psychoanalytic thinking and a source for modern infant research, relational theory, the study of dissociation and multiple personality, psychoanalytic family therapy, and the technique of psychoanalytic therapy.... Volume I of this two-volume set contains Fairbairn's previously uncollected major papers, which are characterized by flexibility and depth in the application of object relations theory to the clinical situation. The papers on theory and scientific methodology show rigorous logic in the exploration of the scientific underpinnings of psychoanalysis and of the issues posed by the substitution of an object relations view for Freud's classical theory. --- excerpts from book's dustjacket

Genres: Psychoanalysis

172 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977