**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Trauma #Developmental > **🌱 Planted:** Thu 20 February 2025 --- When we come into this world, we arrive completely undivided in our wholeness. This original and primordial wholeness is who we fundamentally are in our True Nature as [[Presence]]. But then as we develop, this wholeness becomes fragmented. As infants we have [[Developmental Needs|normal developmental needs]], and when our need for love and connection is not fully met or when we feel our own attempts at love and connection is not accepted, we divide ourselves into [[Parts Work#What are Parts?|Parts]] to survive the overwhelming pain of rejection and fear of annihilation. There was an [[Object Relations]] psychoanalyst by the name of [[Ronald Fairbairn]] who developed a model which maps out how this split occurs. Unlike Freud who saw humans primarily as pleasure-seeking beings, Fairbairn recognised our deepest motivation is our connection with others. His model therefore shows us how we structure ourselves (or how our Psyche structures itself) to preserve attachment to our caregivers in the face of [[Developmental Trauma]]. ![[Fairbairn's Model.png|Fairbairn's Object Relations Model]][^1] In our conscious awareness, we maintain a version of ourselves which Fairbairn called the **Central Ego**—our basic sense of self or [[Self-Concept]] which allows us to function out in the world. The Central Ego is connected to the **Object**, which represents our parents or cargivers, through what he called the **Libidinal Connection**—our natural emotional bond or attachment drive to our caregivers. In order for us to maintain this connection even when our caregivers are inconsistent, rejecting or hostile, we create the **Ideal Object** which is an internalised and idealised best-case sort of image of our parents or caregivers—the one that still fills us with hope they'll be able to meet our needs. The pain of our unmet needs doesn't just go away though—that energy needs to go somewhere, so we instead split off and [[Publish/Elements/Dictionary/Repression|repress]] these painful and disavowed Parts of us into our unconscious through: 1. The **Libidinal Ego**—the self that longs for connection—which holds our unmet needs and deepest desires for love and connection, and is attached to the **Exciting Object**—the version of our caregivers who seemed to hold the the promise that they would one day fulfil our needs. This part of us, which is more like a constellation of Parts, carries our needs and longing for love, validation and connection, often resurfacing later in our adult lives as dependency, craving or addiction. 2. The **Anti-Libidinal Ego**—the self that turns against our need for connection—which holds our anger, resentment or emotional shutdown, and is attached to the **Rejecting Object**—the version of our caregivers who were neglectful, critical or rejecting. This part of us, also more like a constellation of Parts, rejects any vulnerability and internalises these hurtful experiences by turning this pain inward as we tend to become harsh, cynical and critical of ourselves. Fairbairn described this as an inner saboteur, but it essentially represents what we commonly call the [[❍ Inner Critic]]. So that we can preserve our relationship and attachment to our parents and caregivers, rather than seeing our caregivers as "bad", which is terrifying for a child and would risk losing their love, connection and safety, we often internalise this badness and turn it inwards, seeing ourselves as the problem—"It must be my fault Mum feels this way, and if it's my fault then I can fix it". While this keep our caregivers as "good", and while it is an unconscious process, it ultimately results in the [[Splitting|Splitting]] and fracturing of our primordial wholeness as [[Presence]]. This fracturing, while protective in childhood, creates an inner division that we carry into our adulthood where we end up maintaining the connection with our caregivers by disconnecting from and repressing Parts of ourselves. --- **➡️ Next:** [[We develop two fundamental survival strategies from our earliest wounds 1]] **⬅️ Back:** [[When our normal developmental needs go unmet, we are left deeply wounded]] --- **🈁 See Also:** - [[Splitting|Splitting]] is the fundamental [[Defence Mechanisms|✦ Defence Mechanism]] which underpin's Fairbairn's model here. - In [[Relational Power Dynamics|Relational Power Dynamics]] the person who would be in the position of power is [[Projection|Projecting]] the split off aggression and inner shame of the Anti-Libidinal Ego outward. [^1]: Adapted from [[An Introduction to Object Relations by Lavinia Gomez]].