Why Read Fairbairn? Ogden (2010)
Trauma. The infant eventually comes to experience the mother as both loving and unloving. The experience of the mother as unloving is “singularly devastating” and has two aspects, the infant accurately perceiving “the limits of the mother’s ability to love him,” and the infant misinterpreting “inevitable privations as the mother’s lack of love for him.”
Internal Objects. The infant continues to love the mother, no matter how bad, because any object, even a bad one, is better than no object at all. The infant’s most important task is to maintain a relationship with the loving mother and extricate himself from a relationship with the unloving mother. The infant accomplishes this feat by creating an internal object world.
Endopsychic Structure. The infant divides the unloving mother into two parts (internal objects), the tantalizing mother (exciting object) and the rejecting mother (rejecting object). One part of the infant “feels powerfully, uncontrollably attached” to the tantalizing/alluring mother (libidinal ego); together, they form one internal object relationship. Another “aspect of the infant’s personality feels hopelessly attached to the rejecting aspect of the internal object mother” (internal saboteur); togethery, they form a second internal object relationship.
Although the exciting object and rejecting object “are no less parts of the self than are the libidinal ego and the internal saboteur,” they “have a not-me feel to them because they are parts of the self that are thoroughly identified with the unloving mother in her exciting and rejecting qualities.”
All of these parts (exciting object, rejecting object, libidinal ego, internal saboteur) are split off “from the healthy, main body of the ego” (central ego). Moreover, the central ego represses both of these internal object relationships because the central ego “feels intense anger at the unloving internal object mother.”
Purpose of Endopsychic Structure. Fairbairn wrote that the infant internalizes the unsatisfactory object in order to control it. Ogden adds that the infant also internalizes the unsatisfactory object because he hopes he can turn the unsatisfactory object into a loving object. As he writes, “I view the libidinal ego and the internal saboteur as aspects of self that are intent on transforming the exciting object and the rejecting object into loving objects.”
Central Ego. The central ego “constitutes the original healthy self of the newborn infant.” It is only in response to trauma that the infants “the infant splits off parts of the central ego and represses them in the form of the internal object relationships.” The central ego remains unsullied, containing “no dynamically repressed (unsatisfactory) internal object relationships” but instead “good enough (as opposed to idealized) object relationships.”
Object Relationship #1: Libidinal Ego and Exciting Object (Addictive Love). This object relationship is derived from “the pathological tie of the infant to the unreachable mother, i.e. to the mother who is felt to be incapable of giving and receiving love.” The relationship is characterized by “addictive ‘love’ on the part of the libidinal ego, and of desperate need on the part of the exciting object to elicit desire from the libidinal ego (which desire the exciting object will never satisfy).”
Example. Mr. C, a man with cerebral palsy, was desperately in love with Ms. Z, a woman who kind of misled him but clearly did not reciprocate his feelings. Ogden suspected that Ms. Z was drawn to him in a pathological way and found pleasure in his dependence on her.
Object Relationship #2: Internal Saboteur and Rejecting Object (Bonds of Resentment). This object relationship is derived from “the infant’s love of his mother despite (and because of) her rejection of him.” “The rejecting object and the internal saboteur are determined to nurse their feelings of having been deeply wronged, cheated, humiliated, betrayed, exploited, trea-ted unfairly, discriminated against, and so on. The mistreatment at the hands of the other is felt to be unforgivable. An apology is forever expected by each, but never offered by either. Nothing is more important to the internal saboteur (the rejected self) than coercing the rejecting object into recog-nizing the incalculable pain that he or she has caused.”
“From the point of view of the rejecting object (the split-off aspect of self thoroughly identified with the rejecting mother), the experience of this form of pathological love involves the conviction that the internal saboteur is greedy, insatiable, thin-skinned, ungrateful, unwilling to be reasonable, unable to let go of a grudge, and so on.” An example of this is the head of a psychiatric clinic who favors male over female employees. Although the women “expressed intense anger and bitterness about the way she was being treated by the director, they all felt that they had no choice but to remain working at the clinic.”
Object Relationship #3: Internal Saboteur and Libidinal Ego/Exciting Object (Addictive Love). The internal saboteur turns on the libidinal ego (meaning the person turns on himself) for continually humiliating itself “in begging for the love of the exciting object.” The internal saboteur also turns on the exciting object (again meaning the person turns on himself) for being “a malicious tease,a seductress, a bundle of empty promises.” The internal saboteur also feels self-hatred and shame for its own “infantile pursuit of the love of the rejecting object.”
Psychological Growth. Fairbrain believed that the “basic endopsychic situation” is “relatively immutable,” and “the psychological changes that can be achieved through psychoanalysis primarily involve diminution of the intensity of the feelings of resentment, addictive love, contempt, primitive dependence, disillusionment, and so on.” Ogden believes that Fairbairn believed that psychological maturation involves coming to accepting oneself, including those split-off parts of himself, as well as coming to accept others. “Psychological change of this sort creates the possibility of discovering a world of people and experiences that exists outside of oneself, a world in which it is possible to feel curious, surprised, delighted, disappointed, homesick, and so on.”
Example. As a child. Mr. C (see above) had been “savaged by his mother.” He grew to develop a relationship with Ms. Z, a woman who clearly did not return his love. In the analysis, Mr. C told Ogden that he did not know how Ogden “tolerated” him. “In our sessions, Mr. C would howl in pain as he spoke of the ‘unfairness’ of Ms. Z's rejection him. When upset, particularly when crying,the patient would lose muscular control of his mouth, which made it very diffi-cult for him to speak. Frothy saliva gathered at the sides of his mouth and mucous dripped from his nose while tears ran down his cheeks.” Ogden came to believe “that it was very important to the analytic experience that Mr. C experience for himself over a period of years the reality that I was not repulsed by him even when he bellowed in pain and could not control the release of tears, nasal mucous and saliva. It must have been apparent to Mr. C, though I never put it into words, that I loved him as I would one day love my own children in their infancy.”
Ogden also concluded that “Mr. C’s accounts of his humiliating mother as a description not only of his external object mother, but, as importantly, a description of an aspect of himself that viewed himself as an object of contempt and which enlisted others (most prominently, Ms. Z) to humiliate him. A humiliating connection with Ms. Z was unconsciously felt to be far better than no connection at all.” In the analytic relationship, Mr. C found the strength to “extricate himself from his addictive love of Ms. Z (a bond between the libidinal ego and the exciting object) while, at the same time, diminishing his compulsive engagement in forms of relatedness based on the bond between the debasing and debased aspects of himself (the bond between the internal saboteur and the libidinal ego).” A key to the treatment’s success “was the real (as opposed to the transferential) relationship between the two of us (for example, in my genuinely not feeling repulsed by the mucous, tears and saliva flowing from his nose, eyes and mouth as he bellowed in pain, and by my experiencing love for him of a sort that,later in life, I would feel for my infant sons).”
Internal Objects. The infant continues to love the mother, no matter how bad, because any object, even a bad one, is better than no object at all. The infant’s most important task is to maintain a relationship with the loving mother and extricate himself from a relationship with the unloving mother. The infant accomplishes this feat by creating an internal object world.
Endopsychic Structure. The infant divides the unloving mother into two parts (internal objects), the tantalizing mother (exciting object) and the rejecting mother (rejecting object). One part of the infant “feels powerfully, uncontrollably attached” to the tantalizing/alluring mother (libidinal ego); together, they form one internal object relationship. Another “aspect of the infant’s personality feels hopelessly attached to the rejecting aspect of the internal object mother” (internal saboteur); togethery, they form a second internal object relationship.
Although the exciting object and rejecting object “are no less parts of the self than are the libidinal ego and the internal saboteur,” they “have a not-me feel to them because they are parts of the self that are thoroughly identified with the unloving mother in her exciting and rejecting qualities.”
All of these parts (exciting object, rejecting object, libidinal ego, internal saboteur) are split off “from the healthy, main body of the ego” (central ego). Moreover, the central ego represses both of these internal object relationships because the central ego “feels intense anger at the unloving internal object mother.”
Purpose of Endopsychic Structure. Fairbairn wrote that the infant internalizes the unsatisfactory object in order to control it. Ogden adds that the infant also internalizes the unsatisfactory object because he hopes he can turn the unsatisfactory object into a loving object. As he writes, “I view the libidinal ego and the internal saboteur as aspects of self that are intent on transforming the exciting object and the rejecting object into loving objects.”
Central Ego. The central ego “constitutes the original healthy self of the newborn infant.” It is only in response to trauma that the infants “the infant splits off parts of the central ego and represses them in the form of the internal object relationships.” The central ego remains unsullied, containing “no dynamically repressed (unsatisfactory) internal object relationships” but instead “good enough (as opposed to idealized) object relationships.”
Object Relationship #1: Libidinal Ego and Exciting Object (Addictive Love). This object relationship is derived from “the pathological tie of the infant to the unreachable mother, i.e. to the mother who is felt to be incapable of giving and receiving love.” The relationship is characterized by “addictive ‘love’ on the part of the libidinal ego, and of desperate need on the part of the exciting object to elicit desire from the libidinal ego (which desire the exciting object will never satisfy).”
Example. Mr. C, a man with cerebral palsy, was desperately in love with Ms. Z, a woman who kind of misled him but clearly did not reciprocate his feelings. Ogden suspected that Ms. Z was drawn to him in a pathological way and found pleasure in his dependence on her.
Object Relationship #2: Internal Saboteur and Rejecting Object (Bonds of Resentment). This object relationship is derived from “the infant’s love of his mother despite (and because of) her rejection of him.” “The rejecting object and the internal saboteur are determined to nurse their feelings of having been deeply wronged, cheated, humiliated, betrayed, exploited, trea-ted unfairly, discriminated against, and so on. The mistreatment at the hands of the other is felt to be unforgivable. An apology is forever expected by each, but never offered by either. Nothing is more important to the internal saboteur (the rejected self) than coercing the rejecting object into recog-nizing the incalculable pain that he or she has caused.”
“From the point of view of the rejecting object (the split-off aspect of self thoroughly identified with the rejecting mother), the experience of this form of pathological love involves the conviction that the internal saboteur is greedy, insatiable, thin-skinned, ungrateful, unwilling to be reasonable, unable to let go of a grudge, and so on.” An example of this is the head of a psychiatric clinic who favors male over female employees. Although the women “expressed intense anger and bitterness about the way she was being treated by the director, they all felt that they had no choice but to remain working at the clinic.”
Object Relationship #3: Internal Saboteur and Libidinal Ego/Exciting Object (Addictive Love). The internal saboteur turns on the libidinal ego (meaning the person turns on himself) for continually humiliating itself “in begging for the love of the exciting object.” The internal saboteur also turns on the exciting object (again meaning the person turns on himself) for being “a malicious tease,a seductress, a bundle of empty promises.” The internal saboteur also feels self-hatred and shame for its own “infantile pursuit of the love of the rejecting object.”
Psychological Growth. Fairbrain believed that the “basic endopsychic situation” is “relatively immutable,” and “the psychological changes that can be achieved through psychoanalysis primarily involve diminution of the intensity of the feelings of resentment, addictive love, contempt, primitive dependence, disillusionment, and so on.” Ogden believes that Fairbairn believed that psychological maturation involves coming to accepting oneself, including those split-off parts of himself, as well as coming to accept others. “Psychological change of this sort creates the possibility of discovering a world of people and experiences that exists outside of oneself, a world in which it is possible to feel curious, surprised, delighted, disappointed, homesick, and so on.”
Example. As a child. Mr. C (see above) had been “savaged by his mother.” He grew to develop a relationship with Ms. Z, a woman who clearly did not return his love. In the analysis, Mr. C told Ogden that he did not know how Ogden “tolerated” him. “In our sessions, Mr. C would howl in pain as he spoke of the ‘unfairness’ of Ms. Z's rejection him. When upset, particularly when crying,the patient would lose muscular control of his mouth, which made it very diffi-cult for him to speak. Frothy saliva gathered at the sides of his mouth and mucous dripped from his nose while tears ran down his cheeks.” Ogden came to believe “that it was very important to the analytic experience that Mr. C experience for himself over a period of years the reality that I was not repulsed by him even when he bellowed in pain and could not control the release of tears, nasal mucous and saliva. It must have been apparent to Mr. C, though I never put it into words, that I loved him as I would one day love my own children in their infancy.”
Ogden also concluded that “Mr. C’s accounts of his humiliating mother as a description not only of his external object mother, but, as importantly, a description of an aspect of himself that viewed himself as an object of contempt and which enlisted others (most prominently, Ms. Z) to humiliate him. A humiliating connection with Ms. Z was unconsciously felt to be far better than no connection at all.” In the analytic relationship, Mr. C found the strength to “extricate himself from his addictive love of Ms. Z (a bond between the libidinal ego and the exciting object) while, at the same time, diminishing his compulsive engagement in forms of relatedness based on the bond between the debasing and debased aspects of himself (the bond between the internal saboteur and the libidinal ego).” A key to the treatment’s success “was the real (as opposed to the transferential) relationship between the two of us (for example, in my genuinely not feeling repulsed by the mucous, tears and saliva flowing from his nose, eyes and mouth as he bellowed in pain, and by my experiencing love for him of a sort that,later in life, I would feel for my infant sons).”
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