Middle Group

The Independent or Middle Group of British analysts represents one of the three distinct sub-schools of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and 'developed what is known as the British independent perspective, which argued that the primary motivation of the child is object-seeking rather than drive gratification'. The 'Independent group...is strongly associated with the concept of countertransference as well as with a seemingly pragmatic, anti-theoretical attitude to psychoanalysis'.

In the wake of the wartime Controversial Discussions, 'the British Psycho-Analytical Society divided into several sets of followers – eventually three sets in one'. On the one side, were the followers of Melanie Klein, on the other those of Anna Freud, and 'in between, as a kind of buffer zone, were the British group who came to be known as "Independents" – Sylvia Payne, Marjorie Brierley, Ronald Fairbairn and Ella Freeman Sharpe, and eventually Donald Winnicott and Paula Heimann, who moved away from the Kleinian group'. Subsequently, 'some new refugees, notably Michael Balint and Michael Foulkes, became prominent Independents'.

From that beginning, 'the buffer group of Independents, notably Donald Winnicott, began to make original contributions of their own and to mark a distinctive character for the group'. Alongside the Kleinians the "Middle Group" represented 'the other division of psychoanalysts who use "object-relations" theory', and for some 'has formed the central core of the British Psychoanalytical Society...interprets in terms of either the Oedipal or the pre-Oedipal relationship'.D. W. Winnicott was arguably 'for many years the most prominent member of the Independent Group in the British Psycho-Analytical Society, and as such in complete opposition to both classical analysis and Kleinian theory...but he consistently denied that he was its leader'. Certainly, among the Independents, 'the four British psychoanalysts who by their writing and teaching have had the biggest influence on psychoanalysis...are Ronald Fairbairn, Michael Balint, John Bowlby, and Donald Winnicott....Related ideas have been developed and applied by such writers as Marion Milner and Charles Rycroft'.

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