Commentary by Jorge Canestri (Rome)

In his introduction to the section “A Psychoanalytic Concept of the Self” of his paper, David Milrod underlines how in psychoanalytic literature there is a great deal of confusion around the meaning of terms such as “the ego”, “the self” and “the self representation”. Does the term “self” refer to—I quote—the individual or person, his ego as a psychic structure, to both of these equally, or to something else? I agree with the author on the fact that there is confusion, and I think that his theory, based on a careful examination of the concept within the framework of ego psychology, is a step forward in the right direction, i.e., of clarification within a psychoanalytic model. It represents the first stage of the theoretical analysis of a discipline. “This stage (internal or intrafigural analysis) requires the model or theory to be coherent, with a solid conceptual system; it should not be contradictory but, rather, should be able to take into account a certain number of factors. Every intrafigural analysis can improve the internal consistency of a theory … The second stage calls for a confrontation between two or more theories by means of an interfigural analysis” (Canestri, 1999). This second step is missing from the text and the author declares so explicitly when he speaks of Kohut's ideas. Moreover, Milrod's paper proposes the creation of an intersection between the concept of self in psychoanalysis and the concept of self in the neurosciences, specifically through a review of the ideas of Jaak Panksepp and Antonio Damasio. In Milrod's work, this intersection seems to me to be the least successful part and I will subsequently try to explain why.

But first of all I would like to clarify that among the theoretical queries that today's psychoanalysis should explore, probably the main one is that of building a psychoanalytic theory of the “subject” that takes into due consideration the precariousness of the conceptualizations that, through the use of the concept of “s