A Revised Psychopathology of the Psychoses and Psychoneuroses, Fairbairn (1941)

Classical libido theory holds that different developmental periods are characterized by the dominance of different libidinal zones; for instance, during the oral period the infant experiences libido (and thus pleasure) through her mouth. Fairbairn offers a number of criticisms of this theory, his main point being that “[t]he ultimate goal of libido is the object.” For example, the ultimate libidinal goal of the infant in the early oral stage is her mother, and her mouth is the way she attempts to access her mother.

The classical view holds that if a child becomes fixated at a particular stage, then she will develop certain pathological conditions. Fairbairn agrees that fixation at the early oral stage leads to schizoid conditions and that fixation at the late oral stage leads to depressive conditions. However, he does not believe that paranoid, obsessional, and hysterical conditions result from fixation at the early anal, late anal, and genital phases, respectively; rather, each of these conditions is a different response to the conflicts that occur during the oral phase.

Fairbairn calls the oral period the period of infantile development and states that it is characterized by an attitude of taking and non-differentiation from the mother. The child’s goal is to move into mature dependence, a state characterized by an attitude of giving and differentiation from others. Between infantile dependence and mature dependence, there’s a transitional stage in which the child splits the mother into two different objects, a good (accepted) object whom she loves and a bad (rejected) object whom she hates. In mature dependency, the child integrates good and bad.

The two greatest needs of a child are (1) to be genuinely loved as a person by her parents and (2) to have her love genuinely accepted by her parents. If these needs are met, the child is able to transition from infantile dependence to mature dependence in a relatively easy manner. If these needs are not met, the transition becomes difficult, as the child fears that leaving the state of infantile dependence will force her to surrender “all hope of ever obtaining the satisfaction of [her] emotional needs.” The child might respond by adopting an anal, paranoid, obsessional, phobic, or hysterical technique:

• Anal technique — differentiation is seen as a problem of expelling an incorporated object, and the child therefore becomes preoccupied with excretion.
• Obsessional technique — differentiation is seen as excreting contents, which provokes the fear of being emptied, while non-differentiation is seen as retaining contents, which provokes the fear of getting an internal disease like cancer. 
• Phobic technique — differentiation provokes fear of isolation and remaining undifferentiated provokes fear of engulfment.
• Hysterical response — the individual accepts the external object and rejects the internal object.

In the early oral phase, the infant’s object is her mother’s breast while in the late oral phase her object is her mother. Transitioning between phases involves not just moving from having a part-object to having a whole object, but it also involves the emergence of biting. Biting is a destructive act, and the infant might bite an object she believes to be bad. And so while the infant in the early oral stage must decide “to suck or not to suck” (i.e., “to love or not to love”), the infant in the late oral stage must decide “to suck or to bite” (i.e., “to love or to hate”).

If the child grows to believe that she is not really loved as a person and that her love is not accepted, then she will develop either schizoid or depressive tendencies. If this child had an unsatisfactory object-relationship in the early oral phase, she will conclude that she is not loved because her own love is bad and destructive and develop schizoid tendencies. If she had an unsatisfactory object-relationship in the late oral phase, she will conclude that she is not loved because of the badness and destructiveness of her hate and develop depressive tendencies.