Understanding and Treating Personality Disorders
Through Fairbairn’s Object Relations Model

• Sept 20, 2025

• 11:30am - 3:45pm ET

• Location: Virtual

• Source/ Event Link: Object Relations Institute

“This four-hour seminar will introduce the attendees to Fairbairn’s metaphor of the human psyche as it applies to personality disorders: Borderline, Narcissistic, Obsessive, and Hysterical. Fairbairn’s model departs from classical drive theory and instead conceptualizes psychopathology as rooted in early relational trauma, dissociation, and developmental arrest.

Fairbairn proposed that the psyche forms through internalized experiences with primary caregivers — some growth-promoting, others rejecting or hostile. To preserve a bond with a rejecting parent and avoid the psychological devastation of abandonment, the child unconsciously splits off traumatic experiences, forming dissociated internal structures: the antilibidinal ego (associated with rejection and criticism) and the libidinal ego (associated with hope and idealization). These ego states remain unknown to the central ego, and under specific conditions, one or both may emerge to dominate conscious experience and behavior.

Each personality style emerges from a unique constellation of defenses against early relational failure. For example, the obsessive patient remains embedded in the punitive antilibidinal ego; the narcissistic patient inhabits the libidinal ego and identifies with the exciting object; the borderline individual oscillates between both states; and the hysteric patient alternates between idealization and devaluation in pursuit of a redeeming object.

Dr. Celani will demonstrate how the therapist is able to use a carefully constructed narrative, co-constructed by both therapist and patient, to gradually explore which events had been dissociated, while the presence of the therapist as a good object dampens and replaces the original parents. Without the attachment of the patient to the therapist, the recall of the dissociated memories would cause emotional chaos. A careful description of the technique of creating and maintaining a narrative that uncovers past traumas, while simultaneously supporting the patient will be demonstrated.”