Fairbairn and the Object Relations Tradition
Part of The Lines of Development series - more in this series
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : January 2014
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 544
- Category :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 32917
- ISBN 13 : 9781780490823
- ISBN 10 : 1780490828
Also by Graham S. Clarke
Also by David E. Scharff
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Ronald Fairbairn developed a thoroughgoing object relations theory that became a foundation for modern clinical thought. This volume is homage to the enduring power of his thinking, and of his importance now and for the future of relational thinking within the social and human sciences. The book gathers an international group of therapists, analysts, psychiatrists, social commentators, and historians, who contend that Fairbairn’s work extends powerfully beyond the therapeutic. They suggest that social, cultural, and historical dimensions can all be illuminated by his work.
Object relations as a strand within psychoanalysis began with Freud and passed through Ferenczi and Rank, Balint, Suttie, and Klein, to come of age in Fairbairn’s papers of the early 1940s. That there is still life in this line of thinking is illustrated by the essays in this collection and by the modern relational turn in psychoanalytic theory, the development of attachment theory, and the increasing recognition that there is ‘no such thing as an ego’ without context, without relationships, without a social milieu. One of the most fascinating aspects of the papers collected here is that many of them point towards further development of the object relations approach by detailed examination of some of Fairbairn’s papers that have so far been less recognised. The writers in this volume evince the hope that the further development of the object relations paradigm will not only benefit clinical work, but will also extend beyond the psychoanalytic clinical realm to psychosocial and cultural issues.
Reviews and Endorsements
‘This is an extraordinary work: extraordinary in many ways. The choice of the subject, Fairbairn; the unusually well-crafted editing; the number of Fairbairn scholars who made contributions; and the editorial choreography of the contributions. By “editorial choreography” I began to wonder if it had been written by a single author, partially because the flow of the chapters appeared seamlessly connected, and yet in its vastness the work was virtually all inclusive in dealing with Fairbairn’s works – to say nothing of being inclusive of many of his unpublished works, which the Fairbairn family put at the editors’ disposal. This is a gem of a book. I do so much want it to be successful: it is much needed.’
— From the Introduction by James S. Grotstein
About the Editor(s)
Graham S. Clarke was born in Colchester, Essex, UK in 1942. He went with his family to Australia as “ten pound poms” in 1949, returning via the Suez Canal just before it was closed in 1956. He did a year at Sydney Technical High School (Australia) before going to Clacton County High School (UK) until 1961. Graham took a BSc (Hons) Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL (1961–1964). It was here that he attended a series of lectures by Richard Buckminster Fuller whose idea of comprehensive anticipatory design science prompted him to seek a career in computing. In 1967 he did an MSc in applications of computing at what was then the North London Polytechnic. He worked as a computing advisor at City University before starting a PhD in experimental psychology at Hatfield Polytechnic which he never completed. After working on a computer-based authoring system, he went to Chelmer Institute (now part of Anglia Ruskin University) before going to Essex University, Computer Science Department, as a Computer Officer in 1986. He was a founder member of the Intelligent Inhabited Building Group there until his retirement in 2007.
Having had a long-term interest in the “anti-psychiatry” movement headed by R. D. Laing and David Cooper and having attended the Dialectics of Liberation conference at the Round House in Chalk Farm in 1967, while at Essex he took a part-time master’s in Psychoanalytic Studies at the Tavistock (1995) and later a PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies at Essex University (2002). He published his first paper on psychoanalysis and film in Free Associations journal in 1994 and since then has published many more papers and articles, as well as five books.
More titles by Graham S. Clarke
David E. Scharff, MD, is Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association’s Committee on Family and Couple Psychoanalysis; Chair of the Board, Founder and former Director of the International Psychotherapy Institute, Washington, DC; and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China, and author and editor of numerous books and articles, including The Sexual Relationship, Object Relations Family Therapy (with Jill Savege Scharff), Object Relations Couple Therapy, The Interpersonal Unconscious, and Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy.
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