Food as Selfobject in Eating Disorder Patients

Kohut (1971) originally used selfobject to mean anyone who is important in regulating the esteem, function, and self-cohesion of another person. Since then, as self-psychology has developed, self-object experiences have been examined more closely. Most recently, Lichtenberg (1991) reviewed selfobject and selfobject experiences as designators of significant developmental as well as clinical entities. Transmuting internalization (that which is done for one becomes something one does for oneself) builds up capacities to self-regulate, self-feed, self-amuse, and self-soothe. These selfobject experiences are internalized also as the capacity to be alone (Winnicott, 1971).

Stolorow (1986) expanded the concept: “The term selfobject does not refer to environmental entities or caregiving agents —that is, to people. Rather it designates a class of psychological functions pertaining to the maintenance, restoration, and transformation of self-experience” (1986, p. 389). Stolorow emphasizes the dimension of the subjective experience of the function an object serves. Wolf (1988) also thinks of selfobject in terms of subjective experience, and states, “Precisely defined, a selfobject is neither self nor object, but the subjective aspect of a self-sustaining function performed by relationship of self to objects who by their presence or activity evoke and maintain the self and the experience of selfhood. As such, the selfobject relationship refers to an intrapsychic experience and does not describe the interpersonal relationship between the self and other objects.”

Lichtenberg (1991) spoke of the nature of the selfobject experience: “How do we recognize empathically and introspectively a selfobject experience? What is the source of the experience? A patient