Internal objects' or ‘chimerical monsters’?: the demonic ‘third forms’ of the internal world

The concept of ‘object’ whether internal or external, is a hold‐over from the Enlightenment and from the positivistic certainty of nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century science, Its use in current psychoanalytic theory and practice is now obsolete because of the contributions of post‐modernism and their emphasis on subjectivity and relativity. In plate of the word ‘object’, the author favors a return to pre‐Enlightenment psychology in order to address the presence and clinical manifestation of what the term ‘object’ screened, i.e., demons, monsters, chimerae, ghosts, spirits, etc. In terms of external ‘objects’, he favors such terms as ‘persons’ or ‘subjects’, which also reflects an adjustment to the post‐modem emphasis on the ineffability of the Other.