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The idea of an internal world is central to object relations theory. It is a world of unconscious phantasy, made up of the self and other internal objects—persons, things, ideas and values that matter to us. The concept has proved a valuable clinical and theoretical resource, spawning detailed understandings of severe psychopathology (e.g. Rosenfeld, 1965), shedding light on the interaction between the individual and larger social groups (e.g. Jaques, 1955), and on human creative and destructive processes in general (e.g. Segal, 1986). All these contributions are built on a conceptualisation of the internal world as a vibrant, living entity that mediates between the individual as an animal, subject to instinctual desires, on the one hand, and as a member of our shared social world, on the other. It is the world of inner phantasy relationships that provides a template for our interactions with the outside world, is itself shaped by these, and is the wellspring of our psychic well-being and of creativity itself.
The internal world is not simply a representation within our minds of all the external objects that have mattered to us. In addition to qualities originating in external objects, internal objects also contain projected aspects of the self. This capacity to blend features of real external objects with projections is a momentous psychic achievement as it allows aspects of mental life unacceptable to the self to exist in objects that are contained within the mind. Unwanted, unpalatable, contradictory, feared and hated impulses, thoughts and feelings can all now have an internal home, opening the way for the self to enter into a rich array of relationships with the objects in which they are lodged. It is this that gives the inner world its vibrant, dynamic quality.
How is such a rich and varied internal world built up? In normal development internal objects are created out of interactions with the outside world. In the beginning these are driven by neces