Object constancy — A revaluation of a forgotten concept

Object constancy is a more or less forgotten concept that deserves more attention. The last stage in the separation-individuation process of Margaret Mahler and colleagues is known as « on the way to object constancy ». This suggests a dynamic open end in which the level of object constancy is related to the quality of object representations at a given moment. The quality of object representations during psychotherapy can be measured by instrumental means: the combination of an interview, the Object Relation Inventory (ORI) and the Differentiation-Relatedness Scale (DR-S) to score the description of important others. Psychoanalytic treatments can show a structural improvement of the quality of object representations and therefore the level of object constancy.