A reappraisal of W.R.D. Fairbairn.

W.R.D. Fairbairn was a noted Scottish psychoanalyst who helped launch the "object-relations revolution." While working within the traditional Freudian and Kleinian framework, he developed ideas of importance that have hitherto been eclipsed but that are now resurfacing, thanks to current awareness of primitive mental disorders, child abuse, and infant development research. Fundamentally, he challenged the primacy of the drives and the pleasure principle and stated that the infant is object-seeking from the beginning. Furthermore, he established the dissociative nature of the schizoid personality in particular and the schizoid aspects of all psychopathology in general. The author summarizes Fairbairn's work from historical, theoretical, and clinical perspectives.