The external factors influencing Thomas Fibich’s personality development are numerous. Fibich (as everybody including his wife calls him) is a white male in his sixties who was born in Germany and was evacuated as a young boy to England before the World War II. It is not explained why his parents decided to send him away, but considering the social and political situati

It appears, that Hartmann plays a more important role in Fibich’s life than Christine, his wife. Fibich’s marriage was not his initiative - it was Christine who “proposed” and Hartmann who “told him what to do” (Brookner, p. 56). Fibich remained “distant, self-absorbed, and his self-absorption took him away” (Brookner, p. 57) from Christine. Though this realization comes later to Fibich, but the main bond between him and his wife was their unhappy childhood. Growing up “without true instruction, without the saws and homilies, the customs and idiosyncrasies” created “inalienable, but unwelcome bond” (Brookner, p. 129) between the two people who were afraid to love. They went through the motions of marriage without true spiritual involvement. Only later in life, after he finally got the courage to get back to Berlin, Fibich emotionally grows up enough to understand that he “was blessed” (Brookner, p.209).

As Hartman and Laird (1983) point out traditional structural definitions of the family exclude “various groupings of people who … in fact organize and perform as families” (p. 27). It seems that the Fibichs and the Hartmanns fit the definition of the family if we analyze their relationship from the point of view of “intimate environment” (Hartman & Laird, 1983). They have made a commitment to sharing a living space (though each maintains a separate apartment, “it was natural for them to live separated by no more than a single storey” (Brookner, p. 7). Their emotional ties can’t be closer, and they share a variety of family roles and functions. In fact, Marianne Hartmann, “the docile, the silent” was closer to Christine than to her own mother and she was the only one who could “dispel Fibich’s melancholy” ((Brookner, p. 64). While Hartmann and Yvette had more influence over Toto than his own parents.

Family as a social institute plays a major role in the development of personality (Longres, 1995). Fibich remembers nothing about his parents. But he wants to find out about his roots and that’s what sends him to the analyst. However, “no momentous retrieval had taken place” (Brookner, p. 31) and he is profoundly disappointed that there was nothing that “might at last supply him with identity” (ibid.). Wolfenstein (1966, 1969) describes the loss of parents while the individual is still immature as “a massive trauma from which it is very difficult to recover” (cit. by Freudenberger & Gallagher, 1995, p. 150). For Fibich, this trauma was even more serious because he had no other relatives. The only person, which could be considered as parental figure, is Aunt Marie - in fact, Hartmann’s aunt.

In order to summarize Fibich’s case we’ll consider his personality from the point of view of the study of normality presented by Longres (Longres, 1990). A researcher applying the principle of “normality as average” to Fibich will definitely find his behavior and lifestyle as abnormal. He is very different from an average middle-aged English gentleman and practically an opposite of his friend Hartmann.

The “normality as health” approach presents certain difficulties. He demonstrates the signs of depression, yet depression is a more or less normal state for him as he had been depressed all his life. His ego functions like reality testing, judgment, regulation and control of drives, affects, and impulses, thought processes, master-competence seem to be intact (Goldstein, 1995). Sometimes he appears to lose the sense of reality of the world and of the self, but it does not affect his functioning.

Some topics in this essay:
Hartmann Brookner, Freudenberger Gallagher, Aunt Marie, Toto Fibich, Christine Fibich, Longres Longres, Berlin Fibich, Hartmann Yvette, Thomas Fibich, Hartmann Internal, longres 1995, friend hartmann, gallagher 1995, freudenberger gallagher 1995, freudenberger gallagher, human behavior, aunt marie, fibich’s life, personality development, gallagher 1995 150, brookner 31, trip berlin, unfinished mourning process, deep dependency feelings, hartman laird 1983,