ABSTRACT
This chapter examines aspects of the theories advanced by W. R. D. Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, and John Bowlby. Psychoanalysts hailing from the British Middle School have had a profound effect on the development of psychoanalytic thinking and practice. Considering from whence these Middle School analysts came leads to an appreciation of the beneficial effects of the independent thinking of outsiders on the development of mainstream psychoanalysis. Tom Ogden refers to Fairbairn's theory of internal object relations as "one of the most important contributions to the development of analytic theory in its first century". While Fairbairn emphasized the behavior of early caregivers, he noted individual differences in how infants experience the inevitable deprivations that result from the inability of real objects to function as ideal objects, which leaves the child painfully dissatisfied with how his primary caregivers had behaved. Most analysts associated with the Middle School share in common certain beliefs about development in general and about treatment in particular.
