Ronald Fairbairn: A Contemporary Introduction by David P. Celani, Routledge, London and New York, 2025, 203 pp.
Abstract
David P. Celani’s Ronald Fairbairn: A Contemporary Introduction offers a welcome and long‑needed guide through the dense, often fragmentary writings of Scottish psychiatrist William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn (1903-1964), a pioneer of object relations theory. Fairbairn proposed that human motivation is rooted not in drives but in the need to relate to others. He believed that early failures of maternal empathy compel children to dissociate painful experiences and to split the mind into isolated ego‑states, each tied to an internalized aspect of the parent. These radical departures from Freudian drive theory were, in their day, so heretical that Fairbairn’s work languished on the margins of psychoanalytic discourse.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Memory
Trauma
and Commemoration
Philosophy
Ethics
and Existentialism
Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Clio s Psyche
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- Volume - Number 26 (1)
- Pages
- 1–1
- Publication date
- 1 January 2026
- Language
- EN