Abstract:
Fairbairn psychology is effective in treating characterological problems which is avoided by traditional Freudian psychoanalysis. However, the collective patterns that reflects individual tendencies which can also be interpreted with Fairbairnian psychology has been overlooked. One concept in Fairbairn psychology which translated into the real world as addiction is Substitutive Satisfaction. It has overall effect on the character of how the modern world operates.
Keywords:
Fairbairn Psychology, Substitutive Satisfaction, Prevalence of Abuse, Addiction Economy, Denial
NOTE:
If you are new to or not familiar with Fairbairn psychology, I recommend readers to read:
“Introduction, Summary, and Basics of Fairbairn’s Object Relation Psychology”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introduction-basics-fairbairns-object-relation-h-lansel-imtme
The article explains and has overview of Fairbairn psychology with Fairbairn Mind Diagram.
I also explain Fairbairn psychology in these videos:
IPhA Conference 2026-05-30 Personal and Korea History Reflection w Fairbairn Psychology Q&A Included
57 minutes
https://youtube.com/video/fisqUl68tqs/
Fairbairn, Confucianism, Korea: Fairbairn and Korea’s Modern History in Relation to Child Abuse.
2 hour 15 minutes
https://youtube.com/video/WWRNEGGwU5I/
MAIN ARTICLE:
Fairbairnian psychology is based on the idea that psychological problem comes from childhood dysfunctional relationships, such as abuse and neglect, and impediment of natural development from such relationships. An infant’s need for parent is absolute even when there are neglects/abuses. As such, when parents are neglectful and abusive, an infant/child does not have any choice but to continue the relationship with the bad parents. In order to continue the relationship with the bad object, child’s mind splits Central Ego (=the original whole ego) into two more egos: Antilibidinal and Libidinal Egos(i). This is because badness of the parents is too much to deal with in conscious awareness. Antilibidinal ego holds all the memory of abuse/neglect and hates the bad object. Libidinal ego fantasize about the bad object and idealize it, believing that nurture and love are just around the corner, so the child can continue to have hope to live for. Such child’s conscious awareness moves among central ego, anti-libidinal ego, libidinal ego according to whatever the situation suits for his psychic survival.
These two egos (Antilibidinal / Libidinal Egos) are removed from each other’s conscious awareness. In other words, they are unaware of each other. Unless there are good enough nurture and therapy, these these split ego parts do not integrate, even when he becomes an adult.
This entire psychic structure is fueled by need to get the justice/revenge from the bad object; at the same time it is driven by the need to get the nurture from the bad object. When he becomes an adult, these internal dynamics tend to drive him or to be drawn into similar relationship that reflect his earlier relationships. Essentially, this is acting out from the part-ego selves (antilibidinal/libidinal). Such relationship is often dysfunctional and has character of Substitutive Satisfaction. It does not satisfy the fundamental need to nurture the depleted/damaged central ego because it is not central ego oriented.
Unfortunately, such person does not have much faith in central ego oriented relationship because too often, in his childhood, good object failed or turned into bad object, thus weary of it. Also, his central ego is not developed enough to have a mature relationship.
Substitutive satisfaction can manifest in all parts of life – habit, diet, career, relationship, etc., to whatever area and degree that will temporarily satisfy. Substitutive satisfaction as an addiction is a way acting out this internal structure.
Part-egos (antilibidinal/libidinal) are fanatical and have black-and-white ways of looking at things. Addiction also have this character. When he is acting out in this mode, such acts and opinions are mostly one-sided, unreasonable, impractical, fatal, and damaging – akin to how addicts rationalize themselves. In such internal structure, the conscious awareness, as mentioned before, does not stay with one ego, but moves among central ego, antilibidinal ego, and libidinal ego according whatever suits the internal psychic structure and corresponding projection, which makes the consistent effort to clean from addiction more difficult.
This can be made better by slowly introducing part-ego structures to central ego – as documented in many clinical examples(ii). To help the patient face what happened to him and the reality as a whole, integrated manner, the clinician must keep the “Framework” (similar to Winnicott’s “Holding”) consistently to regain the confidence in central ego oriented relationship he has lost (Celani 2026).
David P. Celani, the Fairbairnian expert said that everyone has antilibidinal and libidinal egos to varying degrees, thus there are collective part-ego phenomena (Celani 2026). It seems no one has perfect integration. Our social pattern reflects that.
Also, I am surmising that since there are seven levels of Maslow’s hierarchical need, a person has corresponding domain of self that matches these levels. Thus, even with good childhood, if a person or a group of people who are not developed or integrated at any of these levels, the denial or disjoint can occur, which may lead to disjoint in character to varying degrees. People masquerade as if they don’t have any of these, but it seems majority of people have them (as we shell see why on ACE Score section). These disjoint are well covered by carefully designed routine, personal rituals, addictions, such(iii).
Different people identify different aspects of society, but rarely holistically. Any changes or events of society may expose such disjoint. Even if the change is more true or for better for them in reality, if they perceive the change as threat to their internal psychic structure, they may deny it or hostile to it. This is akin to people who never change or adjust their opinions even though there are good evidences because it is not “official” or politically correct, etc. This seems to be collective phenomena of Bion’s “Attacks on Linking”(iv). Political and social opinions are formed according to the fault lines of collective psychic structure, and politicians are generally careful not to step on hot territories.
Majority of people have a sizable central ego, so the switching between egos as mentioned earlier, may not be so severe. However, many people change from one opinion to another without reasonable cause, but act as if it is perfectly good choice. Often, such opinions change back to the original positions without much reasons given.
There are two important points to ask here. First, does abuse/neglect lead to addiction? Second, are they so widespread to result mass scale addiction?
One of the study about relationship between abuse/neglect and addiction is the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study by the CDC-Kaiser Permanente with CDC, better known as the ACE Study. It is one of the largest childhood study on how negative experiences affect children and their adulthood in health. Conducted from 1995 to 1997, over 17,000 Health Maintenance Organization members went through the study. This study became so popular that in 2007, ACE Score Calculator was created, a condensed version of the original questionnaires.
The study found that higher the ACE Score, greater the risk of experiencing poor physical and mental health, and negative social consequences later in life. 63% of the people in the study had experienced at least one category of childhood trauma. Over 20% experienced 3 or more categories of trauma. ACEs seem to account for 1/2 to 2/3 of the serious problems with drug addiction. ACE score of 4 or more were 2.2 times more likely to smoke than those with a score of 0. Also people with higher ACE Score had worse dietary (e.g. eating more junk food) and negative lifestyle (e.g. multiple sex partners) pattern which increased risk on health. ACE score also seem to be accounted for psychological problem as well. Given that so many people have such negative experiences, it makes sense that so many people have some sort of disjoint in some ways in their psyche. This is more likely than not also because rarely people seek psychological help unless it gets really bad. Even then, seeing psychologist is not on their top list either.
Second, abuse/neglect is very widespread phenomena. In the USA, about 1/4 females 1/5 males are sexually abused. In Mideast and Africa, beating wife(v) and children is common, corporal punishment at home and school is legal. Brutal female genital circumcision is done against child’s wish, often without anesthetic in unsanitary condition which results infection. 95% of children in Europe and Asia are subjected to violent physical punishment at some point in their childhood. Child abuse/neglect happens everyday, practically in every city all over the world. Even in Europe, such widespread pattern persisted till quite recently. For example, in 1979, 2/3 of Germans believed corporal punishment of children.
We as a civilization is in denial of such abuse/neglect and resulting addictions. Even in psychoanalytic community the denial was almost total from the beginning, until quite recently.
For example:
“When Freud first presented his paper in 1896 Etiology of Hysteria about the link between sexual abuse and neurosis, no female was present there. Freud had 18 patient samples in that paper, 12 women and 6 men. They have all been traumatized in childhood, almost exclusively by sexual abuse…His colleagues mocked him. They made fun of him, saying that Freud was only interested in sexual perversion…makes it like a fairytale… simply not true … etc.” (Masson 1984)
When Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson first learned Freudian psychoanalysis, he and his teacher were talking about child sexual abuse. One of the senior analysts who was teaching the course said “You realize of course that’s only a female fantasy. There is no such thing, or it’s so rare that you will never see it. You will never see a case of incest. It’s all in the head of the woman.” (Masson 2021)
Masson was a speaker at a psychoanalysts’ meeting in Holland where he presented his finding on sexual abuse. The audience was enraged. Finally, (because there were a lot of women in the room) he said, “Are there any women in this room who have been abused?” They were absolutely furious that he would ask such a question. The moderator intervened. He said, “That question is illegitimate. Do not answer that. This man is a madman.” This was 1981 (Masson 2021).
British upper class also had history of severe child abuse/neglect. Joy Schaverien describes it in her book. “Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the Privileged Child”.
Quote from the book:
“The Long Chamber at Eton was notorious for its brutality… This barn-like room… the windows were broken and, in winter, snow drifted in and covered their beds. It was filthy, stinking of corrupting rats corpses, ordure and urine… there were not enough of the large oaken beds four feet six inches across, in which the boys slept together for sex or huddled close for warmth and some had to sleep on the floor … In 1834 a report stated “that the inmates of a workhouse or a gaol are better fed and lodged than the scholars of Eton” … But it is at night that the accounts read like descriptions of hell out of Dostoevsky… Rats poured out of the walls and floors to feed on the filth…Larger boys, inflamed by drink, could become demons.” “There were ‘horrific accounts from all centuries … but the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries marked a climax.” (Schaverien 2015)
In such schools, Older boys would make younger boy do anything and everything they wanted them to do in their power, in very neglectful and abusive manner. This is “Prefect and Fagging system” in British school where freshman, sophomore, junior, senior name derived. Younger boys were fags, act as a servant for older boys in such environment. Worse, such school systems were exported to other countries, thus perpetuating abuse. Such abusive and exploitive ways of interacting is handed down to Greek Society in colleges – e.g. initiation rituals.
Kids were killed/died both inside and outside of dorm in such schools.
“This death toll cannot be dismissed as merely historical: many of those whom I have interviewed, whose schooling took place in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, recall children who died, either directly at the hands of other boys, or, indirectly, as a result of bullying…The efforts at discipline led to extreme cruelty and violence perpetrated by the schoolmasters.” (Schaverien 2015)
King Charles III also experienced severe bullying at boarding school, which his parents ignored.
Schaverien mentions that such abuse happened in late 1980s or early 1990s, where there was an incident a physical abuse by a PE teacher. Theo was not so good at playing cricket, which is the sports his PE teacher dearly loved. One day, without any explanation, the teacher made him kneel. He then grabbed cricket bat with two hands and hit Theo in the face repeatedly in front of the whole class (Schaverien 2015). I and many others in South Korea experienced and witnessed such similar violence from teacher to student during the 1980s.
Those children who received such treatment and grow up to be the British ruling class, must had huge internalized bad object and corresponding antilibidinal/libidinal ego in their psyche. Now they have grown up, ordinary things did not appeal to them to give much satisfaction. After all, what satisfaction can they get from stuffs when they are so easy to get and already had everything? So, it seems that wealth and power were the two main things they could get and have some feeling of satisfaction because it requires considerable mental effort to get. These were their main substitutive satisfaction (among others such as alcohol and tobacco), because they now had everything else. However, substitutive satisfaction only temporarily satisfy the void from lack of nurture and love. Thus the unquenchable rust for conquest and expansion from the depleted and damaged egos continued. Such trend of conquest and colonial economic expansion were supported by other classes who also demanded substitutive satisfaction. Consequently, they abused and exploited colonized people just like they experienced in such schools and home environments.
Colonial powers’ abuse and exploit of native people are nothing new. Native people enslave their own people, abused and exploited them. Even African Kings and Queens enslaved their own population and sold those people into slavery of other countries. The pattern of upper class abusing and exploiting lower class, and powerful Kings’ thirst for conquest are well documented. Such abuse and exploitations are cleverly justified by myriads of religious thoughts and culture across the world. What is new here, is the scale of abuse and exploitation due to industrial revolution (not against industrial revolution). In other words, we always had slavery, abuse, exploitation embedded in all of our major civilizations and religions that collective disjointed psyche sort of became a norm. Our culture and social structure reflect these. We try to deny these with religious thoughts, feel-good substitutive satisfaction, and the likes. We rarely try to look at the source of our problem up until recently in the entire written history of our civilization, which is abuse and neglect, but especially child abuse and neglect by parents. We still deny or ignore how much this has influence on our society when we discuss politic, economy, and the likes.
The causes of many historical developments and traumatic events in different cultures may seem different, but a pattern of the projection of negative intergenerational schizoid, borderline, and narcissistic psychic content from prevailing or more powerful groups onto weaker members of society does not change, revealing a denial of a horrific reality in the perception of history.
Given such conditions, undesirable psychic contents were projected onto the weaker members of society due to less resistance to that direction. In terms of Object Relations theory, idealizing bad objects with compartmentalized / schizoid ways of thinking sanctioned and absolved such acts of projection. However, what is essentially an emptying out of negative psychic content does not resolve anything because the pathological psychic structure remains the same, which makes the situation worse. Therefore, such intergenerational schizoid, borderline, and narcissistic patterns have continued. At times, such patterns may resolve by chance, but it continues today. The difference is, in the past, the lack of a selfhood concept in terms of rights and responsibilities as a whole self and the lack of familiar concepts of interactions from such a perspective in society made this negative pattern worse.
The internalized negative psychic content does not go away by itself. Such pattern is rarely resolved by chance. However, the psychic system try to rid of the negative content any ways it can, which leads to pathological projection/identification, forced enmeshment, etc. Addiction is essentially pattern of repeated attempts to empty out or cope with the negative psychic content.
Due to industrialization and colonial economy the production and consumption of addictive substances – tobacco, alcohol, drug, caffeine, junk food, etc. – exponentially increased, not just for upper class, but the middle and lower class as well. Different types of substitutive satisfaction are endless, including behavioral (manipulation/lying, cheating/stealing, sex/porn addict, anorexic/obesity, workaholic, power, consumption, smartphone addict, etc.) and relationship addict (co-dependent, or worse). These products temporarily fill the void left by parental abuse/neglect for vast majority. However, addictions never solve the real issue. Addicts needs more intense stimuli to achieve same level of satisfaction, which over time makes it worse.
To quickly illustrate, in the USA, the sugar consumption in the 1820s was less then 5lb per person. In 2010, it was more than 100lb per person. Britain’s tea consumption around 1700 was about 40 ton. This increased to over 9300 ton around 1800.
Without caffeine, workers cannot keep up with 8-12 hours work per day. Without any stimulants and such, one could concentrate on work only about 4-6 hours per day. Also, automation, computerization, and AI all increased efficiency and productivity dramatically, but 40 hour work week rule has not been changed here in the USA.
This civilization is fueled with caffeine to produce many “stuffs” we do not need, but to gratify substitutive satisfaction. We overwork and use the rest of time we try to get Substitutive Satisfaction, instead of try to solve the real problems as mentioned before. The entire political economy and culture encourages such behavior, drive, and idolize/glorify them. As stated before, such part-ego acting out has one-sided, unreasonable, fatalistic quality and changing awareness. To such mind, the ensuing environmental destruction and similar consequences do not stay as steady and important concerns. These are not just a contemporary phenomena. It is huge part of modern history. Our economy is largely driven with such mentality.
Appendix:
ACE Score Calculator
Before the age 19, did you have ___ (Yes/No on each category).
- Verbal and Psychological Abuse
- Physical Abuse by Parents
- Sexual Abuse
- Emotional Neglect
- Physical Neglect
- Parental Divorce
- Physical Abuse by Mother
- Substance Addict / Abuse
- Prolonged Mental Disease / Suicide in Family
- Incarceration among Family Member
References:
CDC – Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences. Retrieved March 12, 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/fastfact.html
CDC – Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Preventing Sexual Violence. Retrieved March 12, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/fastfact.html
Celani, D. P. (2026-01-18). Object Relation Institute “Fairbairnian Inner World and Early Chronic Emotional Trauma” https://www.orinyc.org
Celani, D. P. (2026-10-). Object Relation Institute “Fairbairn Masterclass” https://www.orinyc.org
Celani, D. P. (2010). Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting. Columbia University Press.
Celani, D. P. (2011). Leaving Home: Art of Separating from Your Difficult Family. Columbia University Press.
Fairbairn, R. (1994). Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality. Routledge.
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., Koss, M. P., & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14, 245-258.
Lansel H. (2025) Introduction, Summary, and Basics of Fairbairn’s Object Relation Psychology. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introduction-basics-fairbairns-object-relation-h-lansel-imtme
Lansel, H. (2025) Matters of Truth, Freud, Fairbairn, Psychoanalysis, and Healing concerning Abuse and Psychic Disturbances. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/matters-truth-freud-fairbairn-psychoanalysis-healing-regard-h-lansel
Masson, J. M. [Gentle Finds] (2021 May 19). Animals Teach Us: Life, Love and Values, with Jeffrey Masson. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJz8H4abONk
Masson, J. M. (1984). The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads.
Masson, J. M. (2012). Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing. Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing.
Miller, A. (2002) For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. Hildegarde Hannum and Hunter Hannum; Translators. Farrar Straus Giroux.
Schaverien, J. (2015) Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the ‘Privileged’ Child. Routledge.
End Notes:
i To see how the ego looks and full explanation of Fairbairnian psychology, please look at my article,
“Introduction, Summary, and Basics of Fairbairn’s Object Relation Psychology”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introduction-basics-fairbairns-object-relation-h-lansel-imtme
ii For clinical examples, please note David P. Celani’s books, “Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting” and “Leaving Home: Art of Separating from Your Difficult Family” Columbia University Press.
iii There is an excellent book on this matter “Ordinary People with Extraordinary Protections”
iv Bion, Wilfred “Attacks on Linking” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Vol. 40, Parts 5-6, 1959.
v Not only beating, but in Mideast and Africa, Husband has right to have sex with wife, and wife has no right to refuse. In Arab countries, victims in rape are criminalized/punished – not the rapists!