ABSTRACT
W. F. D. Fairbairn's theory of internal object relations constitutes one of the most important contributions to the development of analytic theory in its first century. For Fairbairn, the most difficult and most psychically formative psychological problem that the infant or child faces is the dilemma that arises when he experiences his mother as both loving and accepting of his love, and unloving and rejecting of his love. Fairbairn's writing contains a critical ambiguity concerning this core human dilemma. Fairbairn believes that the infant's subjective sense that his mother, upon whom he depends utterly, is unable to love him generates "an affective experience which is singularly devastating". To understand Fairbairn's conception of the development of the psyche it is necessary to understand his notion of "endopsychic structure". In brief, an endopsychic structure is a sub-organisation of the self (split off from the main "body" of the ego/self).
