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Fictions of the internal object
Author(s) -
Charlton Randolph S.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-5922.1997.00081.x
Subject(s) - object (grammar) , object relations theory , narrative , phenomenon , epistemology , psychology , psychic , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , self , psychoanalysis , philosophy , psychoanalytic theory , linguistics , mathematics , medicine , statistics , alternative medicine , pathology
This paper examines internal objects in their role as theoretical constructs which analysts use to make sense of human experience. Object relations theory is based upon a vision that the personality is divided or split into parts. Clinical experience reveals that such splits are commonly expressed in the language of our analysing. However, a lexical reality is not a thing‐in‐itself, but a way of organizing and understanding experience. Jung's vision of the dynamics of the split self encompass a unique ‘object relations theory’ that is both similar and yet quite different from the object relations theories of Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott and Thomas Ogden A clinical example is used to examine the way in which these different theoretical views explain the same clinical phenomenon. The last section of the paper is devoted to a narrational analysis of the place of internal objects in analytic theory. The split self, dynamic is seen as a narrative device ‐ one that makes sense and provides coherence, but is neither the only view of psychic reality nor necessarily an accurate reflection of the nature of the internal world.