THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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fantasies, i.e. mental representations of instincts, but Klein sometimes describes them as
active agencies, rather than just fantasies. (Ogden, 1994). Furthermore, Kleinian thought
failed to differentiate between fantasised internal objects, memories, images,
representations and perceptions (Perlow, 1995). For Fairbairn, however, the internal
world does not comprise fantasies or ideational representations, but endopsychic
structures:
Klein has never satisfactorily explained how phantasies of incorporating
objects orally can give rise to the establishment of internal objects as
endopsychic structures - and, unless they are such structures, they cannot be
properly spoken of as internal objects at all, since otherwise they will remain
mere figments ofphantasy (Fairbairn, 1949, p. 154).
Endopsychic structures are dynamic structures that arise from the splitting of the ego in
association with split internal objects (Fairbairn, 1949). They are dynamic in the sense of
carrying instinctual energy. However, Fairbairn distanced himself from the classical
Freudian emphasis on instincts and impulses, which he regarded as "misleading
hypostatizations" (1946, p. 150). Although acknowledging the importance of sexuality
and aggression in human affairs, Fairbairn contended that these 'instinctual impulses'
"must accordingly be regarded as representing simply the dynamic aspect of egostructures;
and there consequently arises a necessity for the replacement of old impulsepsychology
by a new psychology of dynamic structure" (Fairbairn, 1951, p. 167).
Endopsychic structures may be more specifically described as split-off and repressed
subsystems of the self, associated with the defensive internalisation of painfully
frustrating object experience:
A particular aspect of the self, defined by its particular affective and
purposive relationship with a particularized object, and reflecting a
fundamental aspect of self-definition within the psyche, too intrinsic and
powerful to be abandoned and too intolerable and unacceptable to be
integrated into the whole - this fully functional, albeit crystallized, subsystem
ofthe selfis what becomes an endopsychic structure by virtue ofthe act of its
repression (Rubens, 1994, p. 161).