Concept
Schizoid position
Fairbairn's term for the earliest and most basic stance of the self, rooted in the infant's sense that its love is not received and may itself be destructive. The response is withdrawal from outer relationships into an inner world of objects, splitting of the ego, and feelings of emptiness and futility. Fairbairn held that this position underlies all psychopathology, more basic than the depressive anxieties Klein put at the centre.
Read more- Broader concept
- Object relations theory
- Introduced by
- Ronald Fairbairn
- Key works
- 3
- Related
- Paranoid-schizoid position
introduced by
- Ronald Fairbairn 1941 Worked out in the papers of 1940 and 1941, where Fairbairn set a schizoid position alongside and beneath Klein's depressive position.
gave rise to
- Paranoid-schizoid position Klein's concept took its name, in part, from Fairbairn's schizoid position, but kept her own account of the death drive and early anxiety.