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From: Jean Fitzpatrick
Date: 29 Jun 1997
Time: 13:06:04
It's interesting that the term "selfobject experiences" implies development in a relational context (something many object relations folks seem to believe is not adequately accounted for in self psychology). A selfobject experience seems to me a richer way of understanding the psyche than the term "internal object," because it connotes subjectivity and avoids deterministically concretizing a client's history. (An adolescent client who was struggling to achieve a sense of stable identity once told me she had bought a photo-mural frame and filled it with many different pictures of herself. "Am I this self? Am I that self? Or that self?" she wondered. In time, she was able to experience more continuity, a sense of consolidation.) I prefer the term "selfobject experiences" to "many selves" because it is less reifying and more helpful to clients who feel -- as this one did -- fragmented or often false.