**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Person #Psychology ![[Ronald Fairbairn.jpg|230]] --- Ronald Fairbairn began as a student of [[Sigmund Freud]] where he immersed himself deep into psychoanalytic theory. Where Freud viewed human motivation as a mechanical system of drives and tensions, Fairbairn understood something much more profound—we are fundamentally relational beings seeking connection. Fairbairn understood that [[We're born whole, but we split ourselves to preserve the connection with our caregivers]]. Where earlier psychologists saw psychological development as a linear process, he recognised our deepest impulse as a need to preserve relationship, even at the cost of our own internal unity. Building on [[Melanie Klein]]'s [[Object Relations]] theory, Fairbairn challenged Freud's mechanistic view of human motivation. Every [[Defence Mechanisms|❍ Defence Mechanism]] is a creative adaptation, a way of maintaining hope in relationship. When a child experiences emotional abandonment, they don't reject the parent. Instead, they internalise the wound, believing "There must be something wrong with me" to keep the possibility of connection alive. This is what is meant by Fairbairn's "schizoid position" where we deliberately fragment ourselves by splitting our inner world to protect our most fundamental need—to be in connection and relationship. Fairbairn's work laid the foundations for John Bowlby's [[Attachment]] Theory, which fundamentally reshaping our understanding of human development. # Library - [[An Introduction to Object Relations by Lavinia Gomez]]