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In “The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation,” Dr. David Milrod attempts to clarify the psychoanalytic nature of two seemingly obvious but difficult concepts, specifically with a view to finding links between psychoanalysis—perhaps particularly psychoanalytic theory—and present-day neuroscience. His efforts result in a probing and provocative paper. What I would like to offer in this commentary is less a critical review of what is there in the paper than a critical review of what is not there in the paper and what might profitably be there to the benefit of both psychoanalysis and present-day neuroscience.
In The Ego and the Id, Freud wrote, “The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego” (Freud, 1923/1955, p. 26). He immediately clarified this statement, pointing out that the ego “is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface.” He furthermore clarified this clarification in a footnote, which reads: “Le., the ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensations, chiefly from those springing from the surface of the body. It may thus be regarded as a mental projection of the surface of the body, besides, … representing the superficies of the mental apparatus” (ibid.).
If we follow Freud's initial pithy and theoretically momentous observation on the bodily nature of the primordial ego at the same time that we follow Milrod's thesis that the self representation is a substructure within the ego (pp. 8-10), then we should expect that, in an originary sense, the self representation is generated from the body, that is, from bodily experiences. We should, in other words, and following Milrod's careful beginning distinction between the self and the self representation (pp. 8-11), expect that actual bodily experiences-living bodily aspects of the self or “psychophysiological self,” as Milrod at one point terms it (p. 8)—are the generative source of both the self and the self representation. We should, in effect, be led to an appreciati