Harry Guntrip

Quote from the FOREWORD by J. D. Sutherland:

Dr. Guntrip's qualifications for his task are exceptional. After a training in philosophical, religious, literary and social studies he became a full-time psychotherapist; and although not trained formally as a psycho-analyst he had a long personal analysis with Dr. W. R. D. Fairbairn. Ernest Jones in his Preface to Fairbairn's book, Psycho-analytic Studies of the Personality, wrote that Fairbairn's geographical isolation as a psycho-analyst was conducive to the indisputable originality of his ideas, ideas which would 'surely prove extremely stimulating to thought'. Jones was not given to making such prophecies readily and on this occasion he was certainly right. It does not require more than a look at the chapter headings to see that Dr. Guntrip has been greatly influenced by Fairbairn's contributions to personality theory; and as the author points out, Fairbairn's writings had made a great impression on him before his analysis.… (mehr)

The concept of a self-persecutory element within the personality originated with object relations theorists. Harry Guntrip, in his book Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self(1969), makes the claim that it is a primary drive in every human being to become a 'person' ... to develop a personality in order to live. Guntrip claims that "[t]here are no fears worse or deeper than those which arise out of having to cope with life when one feels that one is just not a real person" (p. 175). And that "[t]his feeling of weakness consists not in lack of energy or innate ability, but in this unremitting state of basic fear and distress and lack of self-confidence of which the individual feels ashamed" (p. 183). "A self-frustrating situation of deep internal self-hate arises, along with a concentrated attempt to drive and force oneself to the conscious feelings and pattern of behaviour that is regarded as adult" (p. 187). "The degree of self-hate and self-persecution going on in the unconscious determines the degree of the illness" (p. 190).

Guntrip reveals the extent to which the twentieth mid-century analysis of the "schizoid phenomena" was encompassing vast areas in the disruption of self formation, quite similar to the 1990's analysis of the borderline personality. "The schizoid condition consists in the first place in an attempt to cancel external object relations and live in a detached and withdrawn way" (p. 19). To contrast with depression, Guntrip argues that "depression is object-relational. The schizoid person has renounced objects, even though he still needs them" (pp. 17-18). "However much the schizoid person tries to make contact he is always withdrawing" (p. 61).… (mehr)