Meetings of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

February 20, 1967. WORKSHOP ON DR. EDITH JACOBSON'S BOOK, 'THE SELF AND THE OBJECT WORLD'. Max Schur, M.D., Moderator.

Dr. Max M. Stern opened the discussion by reviewing Dr. Jacobson's definition of the self, following Hartmann, as 'the whole person of an individual, including his body and body parts as well as his psychic organization and its parts', differentiating the primal psychophysiological self from its psychic representation: the self-representation. (Dr. Jacobson clarified this by stating that she did not equate primal psychophysiological self and self.) Dr. Stern then spoke of Dr. Jacobson's view that in contradistinction to the adult who discharges toward inside and outside, in the infant there is primarily 'silent physiological discharge toward the inside, the primal self'. He wondered whether physiological discharge does not include innervation of inner organs as well as motility, pointing out that we find in the newborn tremendous motor discharge in crying, kicking, and sucking. He thinks that the precursors of affect states are the affectomotor discharges and questions whether there are no signs of destructive drive discharge in the neonate. He asked whether the concept of an undifferentiated energy in the postnatal phase might not be based on the concept of the infant's predominantly silent physiological discharge into the self. He questioned the concept of undifferentiated energy.

Dr. Jacobson felt that Dr. Stern confused ego, self, and person. Her concept of self-representation is based on Freud's concept of object-representation. She stated that the term 'self' is used only descriptively and stressed that she had never said that the self was the primary psychophysiological self. She also pointed out that she had also spoken of motor discharge: 'As the embryonal movements show, even before birth, the embryo is able to discharge drive energy also through motor channels'. Regarding destructive processes and drive