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Certain parallels can be drawn between the artistic and the psycho-analytic process. The artist's creation of works of art and the patient's re-creation of the personality are both difficult tasks of the self in which selfobject needs are particularly strong, and in this chapter I shall show those that appear crucial to each. I also hope to clarify an issue regarding the use of Kohut's concept of the selfobject. The confusion has been noted by Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood (1987)–that selfobject refers to a vitalizing self-experience but is often used as though it referred to a person. As they state “It is often forgotten that 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.” (p. 16).
The conceptual problem may arise because selfobject function (and selfobject failure) is inevitably linked to actual past (archaic) and present objects. As Stolorow et al, further note: “The term selfobject refers to an object experienced subjectively as serving certain functions–that is, it refers to a dimension of experiencing an object (Kohut, 1984, p. 49), in which a specific bond is required for maintaining, restoring, or consolidating the organization of self-experience.” (pp. 16-17). Thus, whereas selfobject refers to function and not agent, self-cohesion is also often determined by our subjective experience of an actual object, as in the examples of our early (and ongoing) caregiving agents or in the mobilization of selfobject transferences in analysis.