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To cite this article: David Milrod M.D. (2002) The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation, Neuropsychoanalysis:
An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 4:1, 7-23, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2002.10773372
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15294145.2002.10773372
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of the terms ``the ego,'' ``the self,'' and ``the self
representation,'' than about most psychoanalytic
terms. Scanning the literature can easily lead one
to wonder whether ``the self'' refers to the
individual or person, his ego as a psychic structure,
to both of these equally, to a psychic representation of the individual, to a superordinate fourth
psychic structure alongside the id, ego, and superego, or to a fantasy. This state of aairs has led
some psychoanalysts to advocate the abolition of
the term. These psychoanalysts believe it has
detracted from Freud's elegant theory in which
``the ego'' had the ``advantage'' of referring both
to the person or experiential self, as well as to the
abstract psychic structure. For a sampling of the
confusion see Panel Report: Psychoanalytic
Theories of the Self (Richards, 1982).
Freud himself contributed to the diculty in
terminology by using the term ``ego'' in several
dierent ways. In the early years of psychoanalysis, terms were loosely applied until a
sucient body of clinical and theoretical experience had accumulated, bringing with it the
possibility of greater specicity. Although Freud
was entitled to use his terms more loosely as he
sorted out his ideas, I believe we no longer should
today, but should strive for greater specicity
wherever possible. In Freud's hands ``the ego''
could refer to the individual, to his character, to
the executive part of the psychic apparatus, or at
times to the psychic representation of the
individual. Hartmann (1956) gave a good summary of the various meanings the term ``ego''
took on in Freud's early work. Today we try to
dierentiate those separate meanings from each
other and assign to each a dierent, clear, and
specic term. Hence, unlike those who think the
term ``self'' should be dropped from psychoanalytic terminology, I believe that its proper and
careful use has great potential for clarifying many
aspects of our theory, as well as illuminating our
clinical understanding and technique.
In studying the self we should begin with the
point that ``the self'' is not the same as ``the self
representation,'' any more than ``the object'' is
the same as ``the object representation.'' The term
``object'' refers to a tangible external person (we
here assume a human object) including all of his
or her individual characteristics, physical, psychological, emotional, along with their past
history, and their ambitions and aspirations as
far as they are known to the subject. ``The object
representation'' (or more fully, ``the psychic
representation of the object'') is a representation
or image (not limited to visual impressions) of
that external object which an individual forms
and carries in his mind. It is not the real external
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object but it does have a close relationship to that
person. All of the qualities, more or less objective,
that come from experiences, memories, perceptions, hopes, wishes, fantasies, fears, and more,
about the real object that have been meaningful
to the subject observer, form part of the mental
image the individual has of that object. In other
words, all of these components form part of the
content of the object representation of that
specic object. In time, the object representation
becomes integrated into a stable, more or less
constantly present (i.e., constantly cathected4)
substructure within the ego, and thus becomes
part of the psychic apparatus, separate and
distinct from the real object. This is in keeping
with an important principle Grossman (1992)
emphasized, namely that a representation of any
entity exists in a totally dierent realm from that
in which the entity itself resides. In this case the
object resides in the external world (from the
point of view of the subject), while the object
representation is a substructure in the subject's
ego and so is part of his psychic apparatus. There
are always dierences between the object and its
representation, depending on the nature of the
emotional involvement the individual has with
that object, as well as the emotional and
characterological makeup of the individual. There
is no such thing as an object representation that is
entirely objective and true to the real external
object. It will always be inuenced by emotional
and psychological factors such as dependency,
love, admiration, envy, jealousy, anger, guilt, etc.
In a parallel way an individual is himself or
herself a tangible esh and blood person who
exists in the real world very much like any
``object'' does. ``The self'' refers to that tangible,
substantive individual, including all of his or her
characteristics, physical, emotional, psychological,
and past history. Synonymous terms we might use
are ``the real self'' or, better, ``the psychophysiological self.'' Most importantly, a psychic
representation develops of the self just as it does
for the real object. The formal term by which we
know it is ``the psychic representation of the self,''
or as it is more usually referred to, ``the self
representation.'' It is a representation or an image
(again, not limited to visual impressions) in the
individual's own mind of ``the self''.
4
Cathexis is a psychoanalytic term closely related to the
theory of drive energy, a metaphorical quantitative conception
unrelated to measureable physical force, but referring to the
intensity of mental activity. It refers to the investment of drive
energy (libidinal or aggressive) onto a specic psychic entity,
interest, or activity. Drive energy may be cathected (in the above
example the object representation would be cathected), or
decathected (withdrawn from), or displaced (shifted from one
entity onto another), by the activity of the ego.
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terms like ``self regard'' (1914), but did not
distinguish between the ego and the self. As
described above, he regularly used the term ``ego''
in describing secondary narcissism. This state of
aairs did not change until 1950, when Hartmann
and Jacobson introduced the self and the self
representation into our theoretical framework.
Hartmann (1950) pointed to the confusion in
meaning of the term narcissism, which until then
had been used to refer to either the cathexis of the
self or of the ego (pp. 8485): ``However the
opposite of object cathexis is not ego cathexis, but
the cathexis of one's own person, that is self
cathexis''. He concluded that it would be
clarifying to dene narcissism as the libidinal
cathexis of the self, and then added, ``(It) might be
useful to apply the term self representation as
opposed to object representation.'' In these
comments Hartmann discriminates between the
ego and the self as well as between the self and the
self representation.
Psychic representations develop gradually.
The newborn presumably has no concept of inner
and outer, self and non-self, and no representations of the object world or the self. Psychic
structures (ego, id, and superego) do not yet exist,
and the drives are not yet dierentiated from one
another. Hartmann referred to this as the
undierentiated stage of development when one
may say that all is sensory experience, or as Spitz
put it, all is coenesthetic receptivity. But changes
soon appear, and they can begin to show up
within hours of birth. For example, one can
sometimes observe newborns in the delivery
room, after respiration is established and they
are made comfortable, looking into the overhead
delivery room lights and calmly closing and
opening their eyes repetitively, apparently exploring a newfound ability to turn the lights on and
o. We might be seeing here the rst elements of
what could evolve into an ego function, the
control of sensory stimulae, and the rst elements
of an awareness of something belonging to the
outside. Hartmann suggested that it was an early
forerunner of the ego function of defense. All of
this may begin within a half hour after birth.
Changes like this multiply inexorably over
time as the ego develops. The early concern for
comfort and the avoidance of distress is primary,
and is at rst focussed on the earliest primordial
dangerhunger. To avoid hunger and to be
nurtured, and satiated is of greatest importance to
the infant. It appears that in infantile terms,
hunger is experienced as an emergency situation
of life threatening proportion. A satisfying feeding completely calms the distress, whereupon the
baby falls asleep, often at the breast in the
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mother's arms. The cycle of hunger and satiation
will be repeated countless times throughout
childhood. It is possible to postulate that the
newborn's subjective experience is that his cry of
distress magically produces the milk and the
comforting feeding. The wish may well be
experienced as magically powerful because there
is as yet no sense of an external object mediating
the rescue from the crisis. But soon islands of
developing ego functions begin to appear, based
on early perceptions and the laying down of
memories. Growing perceptual ability makes the
child increasingly aware of the feeding experience
(swallowing), the milk, and the breast. The
perceptions are not limited to the visual sphere.
The growing store of memories and a primitive
sense of cause and eect gradually enable the
child to anticipate that certain familiar activities
taking place around him will soon lead to a
feeding. The emergency nature of hunger is thus
gradually mitigated and becomes less of a crisis.
On a theoretical level, growing perceptual ability,
an increasing store of available memories, the
beginning of anticipation, and the taming of
intense aect, are all elements of developing ego
functions progressing as the child matures.
Along with this developmental and maturational move, the child eventually develops an
increasing awareness that something outside is
connected with his being made comfortable, and
that he or she does not entirely control this
outside entity. It marks the beginning of an
awareness that there is something outside of the
self, and initiates a process that in time will clearly
dierentiate between self and non-self, inner and
outer, self and object. In the beginning, these
distinctions are blurred, hazy, and transient. They
appear when the child is in distress, and disappear
with the easing of that distress. Once the child has
some awareness of a caretaking object, he will
awaken hungry, in distress, and become keenly
aware of the comforting ministrations coming
from the outside in the person of the mother.
Once fed, satiated, and asleep, he will lose those
distinctions between inner and outer, self and
object. This cycle goes on indenitely: greater
dierentiation with distress, and fading dierentiation (de-dierentiation) with relief from distress. (As will be seen below, there are elements in
Damasio's description of the core self, such as its
transient nature, as well as the need to recreate it
for each object, that echo some of the characteristics described above.)
In our theoretical model these changes are
mirrored by intrapsychic changes. As the child
begins to dierentiate self from non-self, islands
of early representations of the object and of the
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dependent on the child's state of need. This
characteristic is captured by another term we use
for this stage of development of the object
representation, namely the ``need satisfying object''.
It refers to the fact that the child's object
representation appears when the child experiences
an urgent need, and disappears when that need is
satised. The term overlaps the stages of part and
whole objects.
The nal step in the development of object
representation is reached with the stage of ``object
constancy.'' As the term suggests, at this stage the
object representation becomes a continually
present substructure within the ego, constantly
cathected regardless of the state of need. (Damasio
describes the core self becoming more lasting to
the point of approaching a sense of identity.) This
is so whether the real object is present or absent,
and whether the individual is in a state of need or
satisfaction. But object constancy implies yet
another characteristic. Long experience with the
reconstruction of early memories from the analyses of adult patients, fortied by data gathered in
child observation studies, have led psychoanalysts
to hypothesize that the newborn ascribes comforting and satisfying experiences to a good
object, and painful and frustrating experiences
to a separate bad object. Psychoanalysts often
refer to this phenomenon as the ``splitting of the
object'' into a good and a bad object, a concept I
would suggest is not quite accurate. The early
existence of separate good and bad objects is not
due to an activity of the ego, namely splitting; it is
merely the natural state of things for the human
infant at that early stage of development. As the
ego develops and matures there is a gradual
integration of the good and bad objects into a
single object that is sometimes good and sometimes bad. The earlier stage was not due to an act
of splitting, but due to an immature ego not yet
able to integrate good and bad images into one.
Before we can say that the child has reached
object constancy, this nal integrative step must
have taken place. We can speak of splitting of the
object in a meaningful way only after object
constancy has been reached. Then it occurs as a
result of ego activity in the service of defense and
represents a regression in the status of the object
representation. Delays in forming a constant
object would not be the result of splitting, but
rather the result of an ego failure in integration.
Nevertheless, once the milestone of object constancy has been reached, the object representation
becomes a stable substructure within the ego,
constantly cathected, and not so vulnerable to
shifts of libidinal or aggressive drive cathexis.
The development of the self representation
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resembles that of the object representation. Both
arise simultaneously as islands of awareness that
appear with distress and vanish with satisfaction.
Anything which makes the infant aware of the
outer world or non-self, makes him simultaneously
aware of aspects of the self. Just as maturing ego
functions lead to an increasing awareness of the
object and increasing structuralization of its
representation, so they simultaneously lead to
an increasing awareness of qualities belonging to
the self and add to the contents and complexity of
its psychic representation. But the demarcating
stages in the line of development of the object
representation, such as part objects and need
satisfying objects, do not apply to the development
of the self representation. Object interchangeability also has no parallel in the development of
the self representation. We can only say that over
time the self representation shows increasing
stability, structure, and complexity, very much
like the developing object representation. Simultaneous with the attainment of object constancy
the self representation reaches self constancy,
becoming a constantly present substructure within
the ego, constantly cathected regardless of need,
stable, and clearly delineated from the object
representation.
During the long period of development
toward self and object constancy the contents of
each are frequently confused, so that what
pertains to the object and what to the self
representations is not always clear. We speculate
that experiences of having painful tensions
relieved by simply uttering a cry feeds the
newborn's sense of magical power and omnipotence. The child may feel that he commands
and orders the world around him, for which
reason we speak of the child as grandiose and
omnipotent. What a neutral observer would
ascribe to a caring adult, the infant experiences
as his own doing. It illustrates the extensive
confusion between the contents of the self and
object representations. Theoretically we speak of
the representations of object and self as having
blurred or porous boundaries at this early stage,
to indicate how easily the contents of one can ow
into the other.
As the ego develops, and the self and object
representations become more structured, the
boundaries of each become more solid and the
ow of contents from one to the other is gradually
moderated. In theoretical terms, projection and
introjection mechanisms are rampant in the early
stages of self and object dierentiation, becoming
less prominent with ego maturation. We should
note that these early projections and introjections
are not yet defense mechanisms, but simply a
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forms, and the term may refer to the line of
development itself or to any of the forms of
identication along the way.
Jacobson (1964) has contributed signicantly
to our understanding of this developmental
process. She describes four stages in this development: the undierentiated stage in which there
is no real identication process; the stage of
merged early images of self and object; the stage
of imitation; and the stage of select mature
identication. Because the self and object images
have not yet begun to separate to any degree in
the undierentiated stage (a stage also referred to
as primary narcissism), there is no true identication and no wish to become like someone else.
Freud referred to this stage in the terms of the
time (1914), when he said the child at rst takes
himself as his own ideal. This is a period
characterized by fantasies and feelings of omnipotence and grandiosity, so that understandably,
there is no striving for something beyond.
With some development beyond the undifferentiated phase, we have seen how self and
object dierentiation increases with distress and
how gratication leads to the remerging of self
and object images. The sense of perfection is
associated with the merged self-object state. At
this point the child does not have to wish to be the
mother because he or she becomes the mother in
the experience of merging. With further ego
maturation, and more structured self and object
representations, the automatic remerging with
gratication no longer occurs. It will require a
degree of regression to create the state of
remerging of self and object representations so
that the child can magically become one with the
adult and share in their power and perfection. In
these early forms of merging identications,
distinctions between self and object images are
lost.
With further development, as the self and
object images begin the slow process of becoming
more distinct from one another, the child's reality
sense will eventually impose on him the awareness
of being small, weak, and ineectual. The primary
love object begins to represent all that is powerful,
perfect, and aggrandized. When this realization
arrives at a critical point, an important developmental step is reached where perfection becomes
connected with someone outside of the self. It sets
in motion a lifelong striving to regain that lost
gratifying state of perfection and grandiosity by
becoming like the possessor of ``perfection''
outside the self. At this point self-object merging
is no longer so readily available to the ego as
regression is not so easily resorted to. The child's
ego maturation and more highly developed reality
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sense no longer accept the image of a merged selfobject as the basis for a feeling of grandiosity. It
marks the next step in the developmental line of
the process of identication. The striving to
become like the admired object and enjoy the
gratication associated with it, is then made
possible by fantasies of merging. We call this the
stage of imitative identication, and it magically
endows the child and the self representation with
the desired aggrandized qualities associated with
the love object. There is an early passive form of
imitation based on early aective ties to the
mother, but it is soon replaced by a wish to gain
the sense of oneness with the object by means of
the child's own activity.
Imitation is an ``as if'' form of identication
because the self representation is not changed in
any lasting way. In other words, imitation does
not build structure, but disappears as easily and
quickly as it arises. It is a form of play in which
disbelief is suspended, while the hold on reality is
retained. Imitating a favorite hero with all of his
or her grand and powerful abilities may be all
consuming for the child while it is going on, but it
will all fall away when his mother calls him to
lunch and he becomes a little child once more.
Imitating a hero satises a fantasy of merging
with the admired object, unlike the earlier
merging experiences which did not have an ``as
if'' quality. The process leans heavily on magical
wishes, and it involves the total object not just a
single characteristic. Imitating Superman involves
becoming Superman in every respect. One could
say therefore that the characteristics of imitative
identication are that it is total, magical, transitory, and that it does not build structure.
The nal step in this developmental line is
the stage of select mature identication. This no
longer depends on gratication by, or closeness to
the admired object, but on the child's own
activity. It begins in the second year of life when
the ego has matured and become realistic enough
that mere magical likeness with the idolized object
in fantasy can no longer gratify the wish to be
perfect. The child's growing realistic awareness of
dierences, and the certain knowledge that
admired qualities of the idolized object are not
yet his own, interfere with the gratication that
had earlier come from magical fusion. The child is
now more realistic about the object, and more
importantly, about himself and his limitations.
One result of this gain in reality sense and the
realization of his smallness and weakness, is a
profound loss of self-esteem with a pervasive
depressive mood characteristic of this level of
development. The child's attempts to become
more like his admired idol from this point on have
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fantasies that form the content of these concepts
must be signicantly curbed, and the individual
must become more reality bound before the
wished-for self image can be formed. Separationindividuation must have progressed considerably
beyond the regular merging of self and object
images which is still implicitly present in Kohut's
idealized self-objects. The child forming his
wished-for self image not only recognizes that
the attributes he admires in his idols are not yet
his own, but must be able to tolerate the
frustration and longing inherent in that situation,
and the envy involved.
David Milrod
and eventually phallic attributes. In addition the
contents of the wished-for self image are highly
personied as they are consciously identied with
specic admired persons. By denition it is an ego
substructure that is highly valued (libidinally
cathected), and the individual strives to ``become
one with'' its contents i.e., to make the self
representation approximate its desirable contents.
When the eorts succeed in this approximation
(and it need only be an incremental approximation), the individual's self esteem is enhanced. The
self representation will retain the acquired attribute from then on, more or less permanently.
That skill or ability becomes part of the self
representation and will form an element in the
person's sense of identity. In addition he will have
a sense of possessiveness about the newly won
ability, and feel, ``It is now mine.'' He will then
have formed an identication of the mature type.
In order to appreciate the signicance of the
characteristics of the wished-for self image
described above, we have to jump ahead in time
to the formation of the superego with its ego
ideal. As the superego forms, the values which
take on greatest signicance shifts from the earlier
oral, anal, and phallic values, to moral and ethical
values, and these make up the content of the ego
ideal. Their core elements are taboos against
incest and parricide. In general the directives of
the ego ideal are concerned with abstract moral
and ethical ideals which are not connected with
talents and skills of an admired idol, i.e., they are
depersonied. The individual strives to approximate these values and his self esteem will be
enhanced when he succeeds and lowered when he
fails. In addition, identications are never formed
with the contents of the ego ideal as they are with
the contents of the wished-for self image. Instead
they remain ideals always beyond us, and ever to
be striven for. The dynamic activity involving the
wished-for self image is self involved, i.e., its focus
is the strengthening of the self representation. The
dynamic activity involving the ego ideal is object
related as it directs the individual to behave
ethically toward others (Milrod, 1990).
Whereas the dynamic interaction in imitative
identication is between the self representation
and the object representation, in select mature
identication the focus changes to a dynamic
interaction between the self representation and
the wished-for self image. Mature, select identication only occurs after the formation of the
wished-for self image, at which time the wish to
become one with the object representation shifts
to a wish to become one with the wished-for self
image. The magical fantasies that dominated
imitative identication give way to real work
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in its inuence on the self and object representations, and it is a topic I have only briey touched
on in this paper. But to fully explore its
formation, structure, and dynamic action, would
take us beyond the scope of our main subject.
For the benet of the psychoanalytic reader
who might not be familiar with the neuroscientists' view of ``the self'', I would like to attempt a
summary review of some of the ideas that rst
aroused my interest in the work of Jaak Panksepp
and Antonio Damasio, the two neuroscientists
with whose work I am most familiar. It may be
that I am omitting signicant contributors, and if
so it is merely a function of my limitations in a
eld that is new to me. These authors approach
the problem from very dierent points of view,
Panksepp as a researcher investigating aect in
animals and who extrapolates from his ndings to
man, while Damasio addresses the problem as a
clinical and experimental neurologist working
directly with humans. Yet despite these signicant
dierences in approach it is striking to see the
wide areas of similarity in their conclusions. This
summary is undertaken with the realization that I
cannot possibly do justice to the richness and
elegance of the authors' presentations.
Jaak Panksepp
In his book, Aective Neuroscience (1998), after
the author explores at some length the primal
emotions governed by the animal brain, he turns
to the nature of consciousness and the self. Since
animals do have feelings, he concludes that we
cannot understand their brains or ours without
confronting ``that undenable attribute of mind
that we commonly call our sense of self . . .''
(p. 300). He goes on to bind consciousness and
the self closer together in his work, and suggests
that a neural principle of self representation
emerges early in brain evolution, rooted rst in
ancient midbrain regions where early motor maps
(body schema), sensory maps (world schema),
and emotional maps (value schema) rst intermixed. In time, with evolutionary progress, a
multidimensional conscious sense of self came to
be greatly expanded. Parallel to Freud's belief,
Panksepp emphasizes that man's values descend
by genetic heritage from our ancestral past. Each
individual's life is constructed in the here and
now, but values are encoded in an ancient
aective consciousness, an aective consciousness
which on the one hand is based on motor
processes and body image representations, and
on the other, generates consciousness of self.
In mammalian evolution basic emotional
David Milrod
systems emerged whose neural circuits coordinated behavior patterns that aided survival. These
patterns are: to approach when seeking, to escape
when frightened, to attack when enraged, to seek
nurture and support when experiencing panic, etc.
Consciousness is deeply enmeshed with brain
mechanisms promoting action readiness, and the
self is of central importance in understanding the
basic aective states of consciousness. Panksepp
says that the self may be the foundation for all
other forms of consciousness, e.g., higher forms
that enable us to be self-reective and to be
conscious of being conscious. The self, in addition, has a profound sense of unity, not even
disturbed by damage to higher parts of the brain
that result in the loss of specic abilities (e.g.,
speech and/or movement). Even in such cases the
sense of self continues uninterrupted. The foundation of our ``core of being'' must therefore lie
deeper in the brain, perhaps in the ancient circuits
of the brainstem which are essential for consciousness, and therefore may be associated with
a neurosymbolic aective representation of the
self. Panksepp sees that ``ineable feeling of
experiencing oneself as an active agent in the
perceived events of the world'' as linked to low
level brain circuits that rst represented the body
as a coherent whole. Stimuli from internal and
external sources interact with body schema giving
rise to new aerent reverberations, and producing
the potential for internal aective awareness.
The archaic self rst arises from organized
motor processes in the midbrain, and its rhythms
are aected by a wide range of inputs as it
interacts with sensory and emotional systems
which themselves get direct input from the outer
world. These inputs modify the intrinsic neurodynamics of the self representation, and these
modications generate subjective emotional feelings. The self is therefore an ancient neural
process for the generation of spontaneous emotional actions that are observed by recently
evolved brain monitors or sensory perceptual
processors. They provide a self referencing
mechanism in which deviations from a resting
state become represented as states of action
readiness and/or aective feelings.
To Panksepp all of this suggests that the
brain substrate of the self (and hence consciousness) must be ancient in brain evolution and
therefore situated near the core of the brain. Since
it must be richly connected to the rest of the brain
and allow for representations at many levels
during development, he concludes that the most
likely anatomical source lies in the centromedial
zones of the midbrain including the deep layers of
the colliculi and the periventricular gray.
Antonio Damasio
Damasio in his book The Feeling of What
Happens (1999) spells out more specically how
the self arises. To him, the self is an indispensable
part of the conscious mind. In wondering how
that entity we call feelings becomes known to the
feeling organism, he concludes that the sense of
self is necessary to make the signals that constitute
feelings of emotion, known to the organism
having the emotion. In studying consciousness,
we must understand how the brain creates the
mental patterns we call the images of an object,
and in addition, how it engenders at the same time
the sense of self in the act of knowing: knowing
that it is you knowing the object, that you are the
owner of the images, that you are the presence in
the relationship with the object. Your presence is
the feeling of what happens when your being is
modied by the act of apprehending something.
That presence never leaves from the time of
awakening to the time of sleep. Thus consciousness brings together the object and the self.
Simple ``core consciousness'' provides a
sense of self about the here and now. More
complex ``extended consciousness'' provides an
elaborate sense of self, an identity, and it places
the individual at a point in historical time with a
past and an anticipated future. Diseases that
disrupt extended consciousness allow core consciousness to remain intact. Diseases that impair
core consciousness demolish all consciousness.
Parallel to the dierent forms of consciousness
there are dierent forms of the self, the core self
and the autobiographical self. The core self is
transient and recreated for each object. When it
becomes more lasting and approaches a sense of
identity, it becomes the autobiographical self.
Before a feeling is known, core consciousness
must be brought to bear on it, and only then can
we feel a feeling. Core consciousness results in the
sense of self; it is the sense of our organism in the
act of knowing, and it includes an inner sense that
there is an individual subject who has knowledge
of the moment. Core consciousness is the knowledge achieved when you confront an object,
construct a neural pattern for it, and discover
that the image of the object belongs to you. The
essence of core consciousness is the thought of
you involved in the process of knowing your own
existence and the existence of others.
Damasio initially believed that the self was
related to the neural patterns representing the
body, which would account for its fundamental
characteristic, stability. He came to believe that
the original self was neither the core self nor the
autobiographical self, but what he called a
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David Milrod
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analytic view, particularly of the gradual dierentiation of the self from the object, and their
simultaneous and parallel development. The
psychoanalytic distinction between the self representation, (which holds an image of the self in the
present and the past), and the wished-for self
image, (which holds an image of the future with
the hope of achieving ambitions and goals),
echoes the neuroscientists' view that core consciousness provides a sense of self in the here and
now, while extended consciousness provides a
more elaborate sense of self at a point in historical
time, with a past and a future.
Psychoanalysts describe the self and object
representations developing gradually from transient, elemental, part images, to total and
constant substructures; neuroscientists describe
the core self as transient, but see it becoming in
time the autobiographical self as it becomes
lasting and approaches a sense of identity.
Damasio portrays the origin of the sense of self
at the moment when there is an awareness of
one's own organism in the act of knowing, which
results in the sense that there is an individual
subject with knowledge of the moment, and an
awareness of his or her own existence, as well as
the existence of the other. Psychoanalysts, I
believe, will admire this sensitive description of
what we try to portray using a dierent vocabulary, when describing the shift from the undierentiated phase of life, when there are no mental
representations, to the transitory beginnings of
self/object dierentiation. Both views emphasize,
explicitly and implicitly, self observation and self
perception in the ``knowing''. The language used
is very dierent and may involve second order
neural patterns forming representations of rst
order occurrences (Damasio), or recently evolved
brain monitors and sensory perceptual processors
observing emotional actions (Panksepp), or language dealing with the ego and its self observing
function, but they all stress the importance of self
perception. (I believe that psychoanalysts might
gain a great deal in emphasizing the links between
self observation and consciousness, and the sense
of self and consciousness). Both neuroscientists
and psychoanalysts emphasize that the earliest
form of (proto)self is closely related to the
individual's physical structure and to body states.
Neuroscientists place the self near the ancient
core of the brain, which agrees with the view that
the newborn's rst transient awareness of the self
and non-self occurs very early in life.
There are, however, basic dierences between
these two conceptions of the self. Neuroscientists
strive to explain fundamental phenomena such as
perception, consciousness, emotion, memory, etc.
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