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For our purposes in psycho-analysis, the concept of mental representations of objects cannot be defined in terms of a simple sensory perception system. In order to include the useful concepts of unconscious objects and of the superego we must have a more complex but more precise model of the perceptual system and hence also of the ego. It is essential to distinguish clearly between the psychic perceptual system and the physiological sensory apparatus, since the latter does not by itself determine the perceptual experience. Conscious perception can occur only after a physical sensory experience has been worked over in the unconscious; in this respect sensory stimuli from without are equivalent in kind to stimuli arising from within the organism. A conscious perceptual experience is bound by the principle of secondary revision (elaboration) in the waking state as well as in dreams.
To understand the problem of perception, we must suppose that the ego has multiple functions, which must include both simple sensory perception and the internal representation of objects. The cathexis of 'external objects' occurs in the ego and not in the world of time-space. Secondary narcissism is a particular kind of investment of a part of the ego, of that part perceived as the self. The withdrawal of cathexis from 'external objects' is thus not accomplished by withdrawal of cathexis from object to ego (Freud), or from object to id or physical self (Federn), but is an energic shift from one part of the ego to another.
The hypothesis of multiple part-egos infers that they will have various relations to each other in the ego-perceptual system. Federn's 'reality perception' usefully defines the idea of coincidence, or lack of it, between perceptions in time-space and inner perceptual experience. It rightfully differentiates reality testing from the inner convincing sense of reality that one can have without finding any of the criteria for the reality of the time-space world. The in