Unintegration, disintegration and deintegration

Abstract

This paper is a response to a review of the conference titled, ‘Unintegration, Disintegration and Integration’, written by Cathy Urwin and Maria Rhode in the ACP Bulletin. The review mentioned Michael Fordham, noting that he referred to a ‘good’ kind of unintegration. In this paper, I point out that this is a somewhat misleading reference to what he termed ‘deintegration’. I describe Fordham's model and draw upon observational material and developmental studies in order to illustrate his model. I try to demonstrate that his model is useful and relevant in two particular areas; firstly, it is a psychodynamic model that encompasses the functional unity of the infant and, secondly, the model has adapted readily to the wealth of developmental research that arose at the end of the last century.