ABSTRACT
Ronald Fairbairn and Stephen Mitchell came from rather different academic backgrounds. While the former read philosophy before entering medical school, the latter got his PhD in clinical psychology devoting some time to community mental health care and Rorschach testing. The contexts of Fairbairn's and Mitchell's attitudes were completely different. One may even say that the former worked in the time when psychoanalysis distanced itself from science and universities, and the latter in the time of its infatuation with natural sciences and especially the neurosciences. Mitchell paid special attention to Fairbairn's understanding of bad objects and the ways this can be made useful in psychoanalytic treatments. Mitchell clearly followed Fairbairn's path and understood Will's guilt as a tool for fixing old relationships in time. Through the feelings of badness and responsibility, Will remained tied to his first wife and identified with his parents.
