CHILDHOOD TRAUMA AND CREATION OF A MASS MURDERER
THROUGH THE LENS OF FAIRBAIRN’S OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY

SEMINAR DESCRIPTION:

This seminar will examine the critical importance of childhood trauma related to the catastrophic consequences to the child of failures of the mother-child attachment process and the early maternal empathic failures.

We will look into the parental failures that led Anders Breivik to become one of the most horrific murderers in recent history, as in 2011, he killed 77 of his countrymen in Norway. Breivik is an extremely good candidate for a careful psychohistory as his childhood trauma is well documented because the Oslo Social Service agency tried twice to remove him from his mother’s care.

The model that will be used to understand Breivik’s psychological development is Ronald Fairbairn’s Object Relations theory. Fairbairn developed a model of psychological development based on the earlier work of Ian Suttie, a fellow Scottish psychiatrist, who published a short text “The Origins of Love and Hate” in 1935. Fairbairn elaborated on Suttie’s fundamental premises that included the observation that the infant was unconditionally dependent on the mother from the outset and that the mother’s lack of empathy culminated the infant’s anger and frustration, which was designed to call attention to and alter the mother’s response to the child’s unmet need. He also described the infant’s need to keep the mother untainted by memories of her failures via the fantasy of a good mother. Fairbairn took these ideas and elaborated on them and published a series of papers spanning the years 1940-1958.

The seminar will begin with a description of Fairbairn’s model, then the model will be applied to the psychological development of Anders Breivik. Finally, the last section will describe therapeutic strategies that can help the mental health professional with the treatment of individuals with similar developmental histories to Breivik.

Fairbairn focused on the critical early years of the child’s development, noting that the infant and child were  absolutely  dependent on his/her  mother’s continuing nurturance. The  absence of dependable, empathic care is catastrophic because  the infant  or child’s must, by necessity, dissociate memories of events in which they were treated with indifference or neglected. If the child became conscious of all his/her memories of being neglected or treated indifferently, it  would shatter his/her essential unambivalent  attachment to their needed object.

Once the traumatic memories are dissociated, they are then held in the unconscious via repression. Over time, with many similar empathic failures, the memories of the child’s self in relation to his/her object  begin to coalesce into  internal templates that are based on  the actual external objects. In children where deprivation and neglect was frequent or continuous, the child’s ability to develop a strong and confident central sense of self (the central ego)  based on his/ her relationship with the healthy, nurturing  aspects of the parent’s personality  is severely compromised.  The consequences to the child of  an unconscious suffused with hurt, rejection and humiliation, which  blocks  the individual  from understanding the source of his resentment,  coupled with a conscious self that is under formed, lacking in confidence, and  hyper-sensitive to rejection,  results in an individual who wants revenge on the external world, and is easily misled by resentment based politics.

Readings for this course will be sent to all registered by email.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

Part One: The Case of Breivik: Psychological Consequence of Childhood Trauma

At the end of this educational activity, its participants will be able to:

1. Discuss the importance of early maternal care, and to the psychological consequence of empathic failures and emotional trauma that are dissociated on the infant and child’s developing personality structure
2. Discuss and analyze the early splitting defense which is a consequence of intolerable traumatic memories of parental abandonments and empathic failures – that, if remembered, would disrupt the child’s essential attachment to his parents and disrupt his feeling of living in a safe environment.These traumatic memories are forced into the unconscious via the defense of dissociation, and create the contents within each individual’s unconscious.
3. Discuss and analyze the dynamic relationship between the trauma based internal image or memory of the rejecting or indifferent parent in relationship to the frightened and humiliated memories of the child’s self.The rejecting object is in an ongoing dialogue in the inner world of the child’s sense of self  which was called the antilibidinal ego.  This relationship can color the patient’s central ego and produce a powerful transference.  That is, the internal rejecting object  is powerful enough to be projected  onto  external objects, and the individual will act as if the external object is  as hostile as are the internalized memories of the rejecting object.Fairbairn, who worked in an Edinburgh orphanage,  also observed a puzzling reaction in the abused and neglected orphans. These abandoned and abused orphans, who lived in an environment devoid of love and support, created elaborate fantasies that were motivated by their severe need for love and  support. These children  convinced  themselves that their families were actually  loving and welcoming. Fairbairn  recognized that these unshakable fantasies created a second, mostly unconscious ego structure that offered the child the comforting and self-protective illusion that his parents would love him in the future. This ego structure contains an image of the child’s self (called the libidinal ego) in positively emotionally charged relationship to a loving and supportive parent (called the exciting object).This relationship plays an key role in Breivik’s developmental history. The reciprocal relationship between these mostly unconscious structures and the conscious, but weakened, Central ego will   also be described. The two pairs of unconscious structures are unknown to each other, and result in the patient seeing others in the world in extremely different ways, based on which structure is ascendant
4. Discuss and analyze the positive, conscious aspect of Fairbairn’s structural model.The conscious aspect of Fairbairn’s model consists of the central ego which develops in relation to the  parent: when they were  empathic and nurturing, and this parental object was called the ideal object. This ego structure varies greatly depending upon the amount of time the parent spends with the child. Those parents that are deeply invested and loving develop children that have large and powerful memories of themselves (the central ego) in a loving relationship to their supportive parents (the ideal objects). In contrast, children raised in hostile environments have smaller, undeveloped central egos, and large emotionally charged   antilibidinal ego/rejecting object structures. They need equally powerful libidinal ego/exciting object fantasy based structures to keep them attached to their (in reality) neglectful parents. The libidinal ego/exciting object structures are  mostly unconscious, completely unknown to the rejecting object/antilibidinal structures, and both serve to protect the conscious central ego from “knowing”  about the negative emotional events that the individual  experienced. This forced disintegration (called the splitting defense) protects the child from an  awareness that he lives in a dangerous environment.
5. Discuss and analyze the actual events of Anders Breivik’s life while applying Fairbairn’s model, to illustrate how his resentful antilibidinal ego was developed over time during his childhood.Breivik’s developmental  history accounts for the extremity of  his resentments, as well as too his intense dependency on him mother, thus blocking (via splitting)  any awareness of the source of these very resentments. Breivik’s response to the world was a complete acting out of his enraged antilibidinal ego which targeted the influx of Muslim immigrants as the rejecting objects to which he became dedicated to destroying.
6. Discuss how the relationships between the structures themselves provide life-meaning and motivation in all the individual’s activities in life.
7. Apply the understanding of how the relationships between the intra-psychic ego structures provide the motivation to one’s actions – to one’s clinical case or personal/professional life situation.For instance, Breivik’s antilibidinal gave his life purpose as he attempted to publicize (and then eliminate) the dangers that he thought were leading Norway to destruction. His parents were so lacking in behavior that he could  use as an exciting object that promised love, that he was forced to use a fantasy image of himself as the exciting object which urged and supported his libidinal self to engage in mass murder. Thus, his self created exciting object was a key player in his destruction of others.

Part Two: Applying Fairbairn’s Model in the Clinical Setting

At the end of this educational activity, its participants will be able to:

8. Identify and compare the four different unconscious structures when they emerge in the treatment session.
9. Discuss how to respond in clinical situation to four different unconscious structures effectively.
10. Apply the understanding of Fairbairnian model to working with transference and projections in analytic/ clinical situation.
11. Discuss how utilizing Fairbairnian model of the inner world can support the therapist in navigating through complicated patient-and-family and patient-and-the-world dynamics.The therapist must be able to understand, identify, and respond to powerful patient transferences that result from the projection of any of the four unconscious structures ( the rejecting or exciting object, or the antilibidinal or libidinal ego)  onto the therapist.  These structures frequently  dominate the patient’s consciousness in the clinical interview and sweep away the patient’s central ego.  Each structure requires a different response that indicates to the patient’s weakened central ego that the therapist understands what is going on in the session. Fairbairn’s model of the inner world allows the clinician to understand patient dynamics, which aids in protecting  him/her from becoming entangled in patient’s projections.
12. Discuss development of a specific type of clinical narrative that is designed to make the patient’s unconscious structures gradually known to their conscious central ego, while simultaneously strengthening the central ego via the nurturing relationship to the therapist.

SHORT BIO OF THE SEMINAR LEADER:

REGISTRATION AND FEES:

Early Bird registration (before September 1^st, 2023)
$60 regular/ $45 grad students & candidates/ $20 undergrad students.
If CEs are requested — please use the “regular” registration (not a “student”) option. There is an additional fee of $25 (can be paid prior or on the day of the conference).

Regular registration (from September 1^st – to October 7^th, 2023 – before 6pm EDT)
$75 regular/ $55 grad students & candidates/ $25 undergrad students.
If CEs are requested — please use the “regular” registration (not a “student”) option. There is an additional fee of $25 (can be paid prior or on the day of the conference).

Registration ‘at the door’ (after 6pm EDT/NYC time on October 7^th, 2023)
$90 regular/ $65 grad students & candidates/ $30 undergrad students.

Please Note: If CEs are requested — there is an additional fee of $25 for CE certificate processing (can be paid on the day of the conference or in advance).

SPECIAL SCHOLARSHIPS are available for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for retired or disabled practitioners, or need-based or/and those who live outside of the USA.