Fairbairn and Relational Theory

This book presents an exceptional collection of papers born out of an international psychoanalytic congress held to celebrate Fairbairn's important contribution to psychoanalytic theory and practice.

The richness of Fairbairn's work is demonstrated in a series of essays offering a unique exploration of the application of his concepts to diverse areas ranging from philosophy to psychopathology. This volume opens with an examination of the origins and relevance of Fairbairn's ideas and subsequently turns to the application of his theory to the study of depression, hysteria, and to the field of liason psychiatry. Fairbairn's ideas are further applied to the study of dreams and aesthetics in two original essays. The book concludes with a delineation of the future of his contribution to contemporary theories of object relations and to the emergence of a new psychoanalytic paradigm.

Introduction -- The Origins and Relevance of Fairbairn's Contribution -- A contemporary exploration of the contributions of W. R. D. Fairbairn -- Freud and Fairbairn: continuities and discontinuities -- Why is Fairbairn relevant today—a modernist/postmodernist view -- Fairbairn's Theory Applied -- The problem of melancholia in the work of Fairbairn -- Metapsychology of hysteria: from Freud to Fairbairn and beyond -- Fairbairn's philosophic and pragmatic appeal -- Dreams and Aesthetics -- Fairbairn, dreaming, and the aesthetic experience -- Artistic process, dream process, and psychoanalytic process: Fairbairnian links -- The Future of Fairbairn's Contribution -- Endopsychic structures, psychic retreats, and "fantasying": the pathological "third area" of the psyche -- Towards a theory of the self: Fairbairn and beyond -- Fairbairn and the self as an organized system: chaos theory as a new paradigm -- Fairbairn and the problem of agency