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dissociated phenomena of hysteria, for example, “involve a split of the ego fundamentally identical with that which confers upon the term ‘schizoid’ its etymological significance” (1944: 92; emphasis added). The diagnostic generalization extends to the ‘normal’ as well as the pathological on the grounds that “internalized bad objects are present in the minds of all of us at the deeper levels” (1943: 64-5). Fairbairn (1952) criticized Klein for never satisfactorily explaining how fantasies of incorporating objects orally can give rise to the establishment of internal endopsychic structures. In his view, unless such an explanation is provided, such internal objects cannot be spoken of as structures, but remain figments of fantasy. He attempted to connect Klein’s mechanisms with a structural model. His analysis of splitting - observed in patients with schizoid tendencies - is of lasting clinical value and provided fertile background for the understanding of the structural models of the internalization of object relations to come (Kernberg, 1977). While Fairbairn replaced dual instinct theory with a radical object relations theory when he stated that the “Impulses must be regarded as… representing the dynamic aspect of ego structures…and they necessarily involve object relationships…” (Fairbairn 1951, p. 167), and therefore left the issue of a decisive fundamental failure on the part of the environment open, his ‘exciting object- libidinal ego’; ‘rejecting object- anti-libidinal ego’; and the ‘ideal object central ego’ are major intrapsychic structures that have been later criticized for oversimplification. On the other hand, his clinical studies, demonstrating that the pathology of sexual development is intimately linked with the evolving patterns of intrapsychic and interpersonal development, have been widely acknowledged and remain a lasting contribution. III. D. Ferenczi and Balint: Primary Object-love and the Theory of Clinical Technique The tradition of object-relations thinking in the Budapest school, more particularly, the work of Ferenczi, enters the British school of psychoanalysis through the contribution of Michael Balint. Drives and relations are seen as equally significant at the beginning and while Balint does not depart from classical drive theory in the manner of Fairbairn and others in the Independent tradition, nonetheless, he advances a series of important relational propositions. Most notably, he proposes (i) that “relationship with the environment exists in a primitive form right from the start” (1968: 63) and is a necessary condition of emotional development; (ii) that primitive object-relations are characterized by passive forms of object love (1937: 98; cf. Ferenczi, 1924), but also by “active seeking-out of contact with the environment” (1968: 135); and (iii) that the experience of “primary love” (1937; 1968, ch. 12) is the groundwork of object- relationship. 1. The theory of primary love and the concomitant use of regression as a therapeutic agent form the basis of Balint’s psychoanalytic thought. For Balint (1937: 101) “vestiges and remnants of [primary object-love] can be demonstrated in all the later [phases of mental life].” The experience of primary love is described in terms of the infant’s attempt to recreate the situation of libido in foetal life, with its intense cathexis of the environment. The latter, according to Balint, “is probably undifferentiated; on the one hand, there are as yet no objects in it; on the
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