From outside to inside to outside: Comments on intrapsychic representations and interpersonal interactions

The external world is represented intrapsychically in a specific way. Following the age of an infant, for example, the structure, quality, and the degree of symbolization will be different. The term representation in science is filled with different contents. In psychoanalysis, we see a development from Sigmund Freud's “(Sach‐ or Wort‐)Vorstellungen” to internal objects, then to self–object representations and finally—following newer results of the concept of intersubjectivity and especially under the influence of infant mental‐ and interactional research—to self–object interaction representations. Some aspects of this development are presented more in detail. Knowing that on one hand, interaction in external reality is structured by the self–object interaction representations of each interacting partner and that on the other hand, what happens during the interactions in external reality modifies the representational world of all the interactive persons (i.e., their inner reality), one can observe constant movements from inside to outside (e.g., transference, action) and from outside to inside of the individual (e.g., perception, stimulation, containment, modification). Clinical implications for the actual way of understanding are manifold, but are here only very shortly delineated.