ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the tensions between the classical and romantic trends in psychoanalysis are evidenced in Harry Guntrip's relationship to Ronald Fairbairn's contributions. Primarily, he emphasised the romantic elements of Fairbairn's thinking and minimised or dismissed the classical elements. Some of Guntrip's concepts are natural extensions of the romantic aspects of Fairbairn, and Guntrip indicated that Fairbairn agreed with them. Yet, if readers were to only read his descriptions of Fairbairn, they would not fully see the classical dimension of his theory. Both Fairbairn and Guntrip were fascinated by the schizoid realm and wrote evocatively about schizoid individuals and the schizoid trends in all of us. Fairbairn's landmark book, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, opens with a chapter on schizoid phenomena. It is significant that he includes this in his schizoid list because the foregoing characteristics describe how schizoid processes can inoculate the person against the experience of loneliness and longing for others.
