Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Guntrip on the social significance of schizoids

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110080
Author(s):  
Gal Gerson

The mid-century object relations approach saw the category of schizoids as crucial to its own formation. Rooted in a developmental phase where the perception of the mother as a whole and real person had not yet been secured, the schizoid constitution impeded relationships and forced schizoids to communicate through a compliant persona while the kernel self remained isolated. Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Guntrip thought that schizoid features underlay many other pathologies that earlier, Freudian psychoanalysis had misidentified. To correct this, a move to the attachment-oriented theory was necessary, triggering the development of the object relations perspective as a distinct and independent approach. While playing this role in the development of object relations theory, the schizoid category also attracted a note of disapproval. Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Guntrip described schizoids as harmful to society through their everyday actions and through the ideas they propagated. This judgemental nuance highlights an aspect of the alliance between object relations theory and the contemporary welfare state ideology. Culminating in the Beveridge plan, that ideology framed citizenship as comprehensive engagement with society on multiple levels. Citizenship was not just a political activity but also a personally rewarding one, as it allowed expression to each person’s wishes in ways that benefited others. Inability to engage and be rewarded in this way marked obstinate classes and produced rigid and conservative ideologies that opposed the welfare state. Object relations theory described the schizoid condition along similar lines and castigated its consequences for similar reasons.

Author(s):  
Lana Lin

This chapter interprets Audre Lorde’s experience of cancer and racial injury through psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s theories of sadistic aggression, mourning, and psychic reparation. Drawing on Klein’s theories of the maternal breast as the first part-object, the original lost object that initiates a cycle of destruction and reparation, the chapter considers the psychic consequences of losing the breast through the traumatic processes of weaning and invasive carcinoma. For Lorde, illness, racism, sexism, and homophobia are conjoined as objectifying forces. The chapter inquires into how psychoanalytic object relations theory contends with objectification—becoming the object of a fatal disease, racial hatred, or sexist assault. Indicating how destruction can play a part in reparation, Lorde described her own mastectomy as breaking off a piece of herself to make her whole. She rejects the breast prosthesis on the grounds that it enforces objectifying gender norms. Lorde’s critique of the “prosthetic pretense” is applied to contemporary breast cancer culture. The chapter proposes that one of the unconscious motivations behind the social pressure to reconstruct the breast stems from a fetishism of the first object.


2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Stacey

This article explores different ways of thinking about the group-analytic concept of the individual as social through and through. One explanation is based on object relations theory and regards the individual as social because the individual psyche is an `internal world' of representations of social relationships. The article argues that this represents a Kantian `both/and' way of thinking. Another approach is based on Mead and this suggests that the individual is social through and through because individual mind is the same process of bodily action as the social. This represents a dialectical mode of thinking derived from Hegel.


1955 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 366-367
Author(s):  
Dan L. Adler

Author(s):  
Graham S. Clarke

In what follows I will develop an account of Fairbairn's object relations theory as I have understood and developed it, and, apply that theory to an understanding of the threeact opera King Roger, Op. 26 (1926) by Karol Szymanowski. My Fairbairnian approaches to the opera come from my previous work on Fairbairn's object relations theory. In order to fully understand the first of the approaches I employ you may need to read my book Personal Relations Theory (Clarke, 2006), in particular chapters one, five, and six. In order to fully understand the second of the approaches I am using you need to read Thinking Through Fairbairn (Clarke, 2018a), in particular chapters two, three, and four, as well as my paper in the journal Attachment (Clarke, 2018b) on MPD/DID and Fernando Pessoa's heteronyms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-187
Author(s):  
Herman Westerink ◽  
Philippe Van Haute

Although Freud's ‘Family Romances’ from 1909 is hardly ever discussed at length in secondary literature, this article highlights this short essay as an important and informative text about Freud's changing perspectives on sexuality in the period in which the text was written. Given the fact that Freud, in his 1905 Three Essays, develops a radical theory of infantile sexuality as polymorphously perverse and as autoerotic pleasure, we argue that ‘Family Romances’, together with the closely related essay on infantile sexual theories (1908), paves the way for new theories of sexuality defined in terms of object relations informed by knowledge of sexual difference. ‘Family Romances’, in other words, preludes the introduction of the Oedipus complex, but also – interestingly – gives room for a Jungian view of sexuality and sexual phantasy. ‘Family Romances’ is thus a good illustration of the complex way in which Freud's theories of sexuality developed through time.


2019 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 165-170
Author(s):  
Aleksey V.  Lomonosov

The article reveals the social significance of determining the political views of V.V. Rozanov in the system of the thinker’s worldview. The correlation of these views with his political journalism is shown. The genesis of social and political ideas of V.V. Rozanov is revealed. The author specifies his ideological predecessors in the sphere of public thought of the late 19th century and the thinker’s affiliation with the conservative political camp of Russian writers. The author of the article also gives coverage of the V.V. Rozanov’s polemical publications in the press. He outlines the circle of political sympathies and determinative constants in the political views of Rozanov-publicist and proves his commitment to the centrist political parties. The author examines the process of Rozanov’s socio-political views evolution at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, and the related changes in his political journalism. The evaluations are based on the large layer of Rozanov’s newspaper publicism in the years of 1905–1917. To determine the Rozanov’s position in the “New time” journal editorial office and to reveal the motives of his political essays the author of the article used epistola


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-105
Author(s):  
Feruza Davronova ◽  

The purpose of this article is to study the image of socio-political activity of women, their role and importance in the life of the state and society.In this, we referred to the unique books of orientalists and studied their opinions and views on this topic. The article considers the socio-political activity of women, their role in the state and society, the role of the mother in the family and raising a child, oriental culture, national and spiritual values, traditions and social significance of women


Author(s):  
Angela Dranishnikova ◽  
Ivan Semenov

The national legal system is determined by traditional elements characterizing the culture and customs that exist in the social environment in the form of moral standards and the law. However, the attitude of the population to the letter of the law, as a rule, initially contains negative properties in order to preserve personal freedom, status, position. Therefore, to solve pressing problems of rooting in the minds of society of the elementary foundations of the initial order, and then the rule of law in the public sphere, proverbs and sayings were developed that in essence contained legal educational criteria.


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