The significance of the work of W. R. D. Fairbairn for contemporary metapsychology and psychotherapy

The Scottish psychoanalyst W.R.D. Fairbairn (1889-1964) appears, to anyone approaching his work today, as a significant precursor of some of the most recent theoretical and clinical trends in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. In this article, the author first of all tries to highlight the overall metapsychological model of the functioning of the mind developed by this scholar, in order to illustrate in particular the main theoretical contributions that characterise the original theory of object relations attributable to him. Finally, some reflections are proposed on the scientific paradigm shift that occurred in the first thirty years of the 20th century with the passage from atomistic to quantum physics, to which Fairbairn explicitly referred to in his theorizing and which is still particularly topical today, also in the fields of general psychology, psychopathology and psychotherapy.