“The Shadow of the Object”: Notes on Self- and Object-Representations

Thus the shadow of the object fell upon the ego, and the latter could henceforth be judged as though it were … an object, the forsaken object.

The world/is only a mirror returning its image.

Early in life most people develop an internal sense of the permanence of their loved ones as well as a cohesive and enduring experience of themselves as individuals. These experiences of the self and its loved objects become elaborated in a subjective representational world. The failure to adequately differentiate self- from object-representations is a sign of psychopathology, figuring prominently in schizophrenia, the disturbances of borderline and narcissistic conditions (Rinsley, 1982, 1985), and sexual perversions. Yet it is also true that such representational differentiation is relative, and that even in health self- and object-representations