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The internal object concept as developed by Melanie Klein and subsequent Kleinians has increased in importance in the past 60 years. The internal world and internal space, the stratified levels of activity of part and whole objects within the internal space, their incorporation, interiorization, introjection, assimilation and non-assimilation, their projection and projective identification, their fate in the external world space and many other aspects have now become everyday problems of psychoanalysis. The subject is admirably discussed in the Dictionary of Kleinian Thought by R.D. Hinshelwood .
One of the thoughts that fascinated Dr Rey was the concreteness of internal objects and their life in a person's internal space alongside their life when existing in projected form in an external object's internal space. During the treatment of psychotic and borderline child and adult patients this became even more evident. He gradually began to think that the most important task for a patient was to try and work adequately in acknowledging and repairing his damaged, badly treated, depressed and desperately unfortunate internal objects. This was especially true at the most concrete level of primitive and sensorimotor schemas. It becomes still more complex at higher levels of representation, symbols and metaphors.
Dr Rey started writing more specifically about the subject when dealing with the problem of repair and reparation of those objects without which a satisfactory life for the patient was not possible. Reparation is one of Melanie Klein's greatest contributions to psychoanalysis. Then there