What Is Fairbairn's Relationship?

This patient was able to make long relationships with men, which initially were fulfilling. This implies, when considering the nature of the ego in Fairbairn’s theories, that her central ego is developed sufficiently to facilitate this but that she is clearly driven by her libidinal ego in choice of partner as it seeks out an attachment with an exciting object. Fairbairn’s theories are based around the maternal relationship in early infancy but this patient is seeking male relationships and therefore can it be surmised that her paternal relationship is the basis of these actions? Her parental situation in infancy is not known so an assumption is made that her primary care giver was her mother but that she was aware of her father. When an infant is faced with a paternal relationship similar in experience to its maternal one “he naturally employs similar techniques – with the result that two internalized figures of his father, as (a) exciting object, and (b) rejecting object, become established” (Fairbairn 1951 p.174). …show more content…
Over time the negativity from the anti-libidinal ego becomes too strong and the feelings of hatred too overwhelming for her central ego so intellectually she labels these feelings as boredom in an attempt to consciously understand them. In the counselling room Fairbairn (1944) believed that healthy psychological change could be achieved by reducing to the minimum: “a) the attachment of the subsidiary egos to their respective associated objects, b) the aggression of the central ego towards the subsidiary egos and their objects, and c) the aggression of the internal saboteur towards the libidinal ego and its objects” (p.