|
Abstract:
|
This paper reconstructs the history of the term ‘object representation’ and ‘self representation’. It seeks to show that ‘Objektrepräsentanz’ was introduced by Fenichel in 1926, following on from Radó, in order to be able to integrate identification (and the superego) into metapsychology. Freud himself never used ‘Objektrepräsentanz’. Fenichel's pioneering role is not discernible in the English literature mainly because of the diverging approaches used in the translation of this term (object representative versus object representation). It is generally acknowledged that ‘self representation’ was first used by Hartmann but this paper suggests that it actually played a more crucial role in Jacobson's work than it did in Hartmann's. In addition, this paper sees the terms of self and object representation as a reflection of the paradigm change in the 1920s that ensued after the publication of Freud's The Ego and the Id. In tracing the history of the terms, the significance of the Berlin Psychoanalytical Institute in the 1920s emerges as do the Berlin roots of the works written in the USA in the 1950s and 1960s by Edith Jacobson. She received her analytical training in Berlin. Fenichel was her analyst, Radó was one of her teachers, and she was closely involved with the work of her fellow analysts there.
|
