Why Scottish ‘Personal Relations Theory’ Matters Politically

Abstract

Recent British public policy has been substantially informed by a tradition of 'attachment theory' that sees the human psyche as innately disposed to intimate personal relationships. Some commentators have argued that the welfare state has found a new legitimation in such ideas: the family must be protected from the capitalist market so that it can foster the loving attachments essential to human well-being (and also, co-incidentally or not, to successful economic participation). Attachment theory owes a widely recognised debt to the work of Scottish 'object relations' theorists such as the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Ian D, Suttie (1889-1935) and the psychoanalyst W.R.D. Fairbaira (1889-1964), both of whom criticised Freudian theory, and argued for the innate sociability of the human personality. The work of Suttie and Fairbaira parallels that of the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray (18911976), who also argues for the primacy of interpersonal life. Over the last fifteen years or so, there has been a growing interest in the work of these figures, and a developing awareness of their similarities and influence upon each other. All three - Suttie, Fairbaira, and Macmurray - have come to be seen as part of a Scottish 'persons-in-relation' perspective (Kirkwood 2005) or 'personal relations theory' (Clarke 2006) substantially informed by the Scottish Christian tradition. However, the ideas of Suttie, Fairbairn, and Macmurray were for many years occluded by those of attachment theory, so that what is frequently lost in the 'new arguments' for comprehensive social security is the intellectual complexity of the earlier 'personal relations'

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