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The term self is used in several different senses. It can refer to the ensemble of the psychic agencies, the narcissistic organization of the psyche, or the conscious part of the psyche that enables the individual to recognize himself or herself as an agent and a subject endowed with reflexive consciousness.

The German Selbst is sometimes encountered in Freud's writings to refer to the person. Beginning in the 1940s, Melanie Klein used the word self in the general sense of representation of the inner world. We can attribute the first psychoanalytic usage of the term to Heinz Hartmann, who in 1950 used it to refer to the ensemble of the psychic agencies, all of them being the object of the narcissistic drive.

The concept of self was partly included in the term Ich ("I"), in the sense that Freud used it until 1920. Ich was both the person in his or her totality and subjectivity, and the organizing portion of the psyche. From the time of the second topography, the ego became a specific structure. To avoid ambiguity, some English-speaking psychoanalysts began to use the word self, already in use in philosophy and social psychology (William James, George Herbert Mead, Gordon William Allport), to refer to the whole person.

The term self evolved in three different directions. During the 1950s it was used with similar meanings by the two British schools. In "Our Adult World and Its Roots in Infancy" (1959), Melanie Klein proposed this definition of it: "The self is used to cover the whole of the personality, which includes not only the ego but the instinctual life which Freud called the id" (p. 249). Anna Freud also used it to refer to the totality of the psyche, but preferred to use it in reference to the self understood as the object of narcissistic investment.

In the theories of Heinz Kohut, the self is no longer the object of narcissistic libido but instead an organizing structure of the mind. In his "generalized" conception (1978), the self is a "superordered" center, constructed outside of the action of the drives through the relationship with the self objects. The self objects (ideal, mirroring, or alter ego), which are manifested by the corresponding narcissistic transferences, create the major components of the self: the pole of ideals, the pole of ambitions, and the pole of knowledge (1984). The cohesion of the self, which depends on the empathy of the self-objects, determines the capacity to overcome the conflicts linked to the drives. The self is a structure, but Kohut also often alluded to self-representation and self-consciousness.

The mind's reflexive function was not particularly explored by psychoanalysis, although in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) Freud defined consciousness as "a sense organ for the perception of psychical qualities" (p. 615). Edith Jacobson described the self as the source of internal subjective reality and referred to the representations of self that are manifested in analysis (1964). Donald Winnicott (1961) considered this subjective perspective obvious. He attributed to the self the feeling of the reality, continuity, and rhythm of mental life, at the same time emphasizing that it is rooted in bodily sensations. In "Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self" (1960), he contrasted the true self, whose positive aim is "the preservation of the individual in spite of abnormal environmental conditions" (p. 143), to the false self, which is constructed in conformity to parental expectations and throughout life takes on the role of protecting the true self.

Formation of the self is an aspect of psychic development, whether in terms of an epigenetic conception of development (Erik Erikson, Heinz Lichtenstein), a psychic skin (Esther Bick, Didier Anzieu), or precursors to the self (Daniel N. Stern). Kohut's followers proposed an intersubjective theory of the analytic process that attributes a structuring role to the self's reflexivity (Robert D. Stolorow, George E. Atwood, Bernard Brandschaft). A similar orientation is found in the work of Thomas Ogden, a post-Kleinian who developed the notion of the "analytic object" (André Green) in a theory of a third, subjective space, the locus of the relationship between patient and analyst.

The use of self in a specific sense is often criticized for potentially depriving the word ego of the richness of its multiple meanings. Yet clearly, this concept has been instrumental in the formation of several important developments in psychoanalysis. However, owing to the very breadth of the term self, it only has a heuristic value if the sense in which it is being used is specified.

MAURICE DESPINOY AND MONIQUE PIÑOL-DOURIEZ

See also: Autism; Ego; Ego psychology; Fragmentation; Heroic self, the; Identity; Narcissism; Principle of identity preservation; Self (analytical psychology); Self psychology; Self (true/false); Symbolic equation.