their forebears in the original British Society, not to mention other theorists as well...The Independents have many differences of opinion about theory and technique, but they share a basic attitude in common. This is to evaluate and respect ideas for their use and truth value – no matter from whence they come'. Influence of the British independents The influence of the British object relations school has been widespread and increasing in the psychoanalytic world. Initially, it might prove more attractive to the analytic maverick. Thus for example Eric Berne for his part considered that 'Fairbairn is one of the best heuristic bridges between transactional analysis and psychoanalysis'. Similarly Lacan paid tribute to 'the notion of transitional object, introduced by D. W. Winnicott, which is a key-point for the explanation of the genesis of fetishism'; and his followers argued that the Middle Group's object relations led directly to Lacan: 'Winnicott glimpsed the transitional object. That is what Lacan sums up, condenses, justifies and constructs with object a'. Gradually, however, their influence entered the mainstream. 'British object relations theory influenced North American psychoanalysis over the last thirty years' of the twentieth century to an ever-increasing degree, beginning with figures like Arnold Modell, Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg. 'The English object-relations people (D. W. Winnicott, W. R. D. Fairbairn, Michael Balint, Harry Guntrip, and others) who predate and foreshadow the Kohut and the Kernberg groups' were a major influence upon them, (openly acknowledged or not), so that for example arguably 'Kohut offers essentially the same program...[as] Winnicott and Balint'. Thereafter the late twentieth century saw a 'remarkable confluence of...ego psychology and object relations..."a certain kind of rapprochement of the two traditions" in which object relations had certainly the greater part to play, (despite the Lacanian grumble that 'crossing one with the other in varying quantities...is no substitute for Lacan's "return to Freud"'). As a result, it is at least arguable that 'Object relations theory...has become the organising set of ideas in modern psychoanalysis worldwide'. Criticism Because of their theoretical open-mindedness, 'one of the criticisms levelled at the independent psychoanalysts in the British Society is that they are said to be "woolly minded"'. Alternatively, because 'Independents do not offer a general explanatory scheme...they have been called "terminally open-minded"'. There is, however, growing recognition in psychodynamic psychotherapy of the benefits of 'draw[ing] on several theoretical models, reflecting the pluralism in the field today', as well