Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

January 27, 1959. SELF, SELF-FEELING, AND PERCEPTION. Leo A. Spiegel, M.D.

Self and self-representation are considered as being identical; there is no 'self' in the sense of an independent entity which is manifested in self-representations. There are, rather, certain representations which the ego constructs. These representations are the body, and states such as hunger, thirst, breathing, tension, movement, etc. The unified totality of these narcissistic representations constitute the self. Self-feeling is used synonymously with personal identity and feelings of identity, and these differ basically from the self in that 'self-feeling is an "ultimate", not further describable clinical fact whereas the self is not a clinical fact at all; in psychoanalysis it is a concept'.

Clinically, disturbances of self-feeling may be conveniently divided into two groups: disturbance in the feeling of personal identity, and disturbance in the feeling of reality of one's own person. These include patients with a chronically defective sense of identity, those who develop such disturbances under special conditions, cases of multiple personality, fugue states, déjà vu, jamais vu, and depersonalization. In individuals who do not suffer from any of these disorders, the feeling of personal identity is taken for granted by them.

Analytic studies of disturbances in self-feeling, and allied feelings related to reality, have taken two trends. The first emphasizes the defensive function of such symptoms as depersonalization and feelings of unreality. The second approaches the problem from a libidinal-economic point of view related to massive retraction of cathexes from object representations. Spiegel finds neither entirely satisfactory. It is insufficient to correlate directly feelings of reality with the quantity of cathexis. Retraction of cathexis is a frequent phenomenon and not always accompanied by feelings of unreality or depersonalization. It would seem necessary, in keeping