מעניין לגלות עד כמה רונלד פיירברן ( Fairbairn Ronald התרשם מאופן חדש של פירוש חלומות, שמבחינתו היה קריטי בתיאורית יחסים האובייקט שפיתח.
פיירברן שינה בעצם את התפיסה הפרוידיאניית של מילוי משאלות ודיבר על החלום כמייצג חלקים שונים של האני או של אובייקטים מופנמים.
מעניין שגישה זאת אומצה בשנים מאוחרות יותר ע”י תיאורטיקנים של הגשטאלט.
Endopsychic Structure Considered in Terms of Object-Relationships
Endopsychic Structure Considered in Terms of Object-Relationships
W. Ronald D. Fairbairn
OBJECT-RELATIONSHIP PSYCHOLOGY AS THE RATIONALE OF THE INTERNALIZATION OF OBJECTS
A MULTIPLICITY OF EGOS
That the repressed is essentially structural in nature is implicit in the view which I have already advanced (1943) to the effect that repression is primarily directed against internalized objects which are treated as bad; for, unless it is assumed that internalized objects are structures, the conception of the existence of such objects becomes utterly meaningless.
In the light of further experience, my view that repression is primarily directed against bad internalized objects has proved to require considerable elaboration in a direction which has eventually led me to a revised conception of psychical structure.
What actually provided the occasion of my chief step in this direction was the analysis of a dream recorded by one of my patients.
This patient was a married woman who originally came to me for analysis on account of frigidity. Her frigidity was unquestionably a phenomenon of hysterical dissociation (hysterical anæsthesia combined with hysterical paresis of the vagina); but, like all such phenomena, it represented but one part of a general personality problem. The dream itself was simple enough; but it struck me in the light of one of those simple manifestations which have so often in the history of science been found to embody fundamental truths.
The (manifest) dream to which I refer consisted in a brief scene in which the dreamer saw the figure of herself being viciously attacked by a well-known actress in a venerable building which had belonged to her family for generations.
Her husband was looking on; but he seemed quite helpless and quite incapable of protecting her.
After delivering the attack the actress turned away and resumed playing a stage part, which, as seemed to be implied, she had momentarily set aside in order to deliver the attack by way of interlude.
The dreamer then found herself gazing at the figure of herself lying bleeding on the floor; but, as she gazed, she noticed that this figure turned for an instant into that of a man.
Thereafter the figure alternated between herself and this man until eventually she awoke in a state of acute anxiety
ג’יימס פוסייג במאמרו משנת 1983
The Psychological Function of Dreams: A Revised Psychoanalytic Perspective
(1983). Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 6:641-669
מתאר את רעיונותיו של פיירברן לגבי המטרה של החלום באינטגרציה של העולם הפנימי של יחסי האובייקט:
For example, Fairbairn (1944) in his development of object-relations theory posited that ‘dreams are representations of endopsychic situations over which the dreamer has got stuck (fixation points) and often includes some attempt to move beyond that situation (Padel, 1978, p. 133; my italics). Hence, the dream’s function is to work through and master object-relational struggles, in sharp contrast to Garma’s (1978) position in which all dream solutions are “fictitious” and serve a defensive function. Fairbairn’s conceptualization of the dream function substantially differs from the energy-discharge and intersystemic-conflict models in that the synthetic, organizing, or mastery-competence function (Nunberg, 1931; Hartmann, 1950; Bellak, Hurvich, and Gediman, 1973), a function which has been traditionally ascribed to the ego, predominates in establishing the purposeful direction of the dream. Within the developments of ego psychology