Fantasy,defense, and the representational world

This paper discusses the manipulation of mental representations, particularly in relation to the psychoanalytic concepts of conscious or unconscious fantasy. A distinction is made between the unconscious phenomenal (experiential) aspect of representations and the nonexperiential, quasi-structural aspect. The concept of the representational world is described and elaborated, and its development is seen as a consequence of the infant's interaction with itself and the external world. Processes such as identification and projection can be seen in terms of changes in self and object representations, and the same is true for all the mechanisms of defense. The content of unconscious wishes is transformed, by use of such mechanisms, into representations that are acceptable to consciousness. Major transformations of unconscious representational content occur in the process of creating unconscious (preconscious) fantasy, and further transformations are frequently needed before such (preconscious) fantasies are permitted access to consciousness. The concept of projective identification is considered in the light of the ideas put forward in the paper.     

Freud: objects and structure

This paper, part of a series exploring the development of Freud's object concept, deals with the concepts of objects and psychic structure in the period from 1915 to 1938. In connection with the increased prominence of object loss and hostility in his clinical material, the role of objects in the building of psychic structure via identification assumed increased importance from 1917 on. After introduction of the ego-id-superego model, Freud asserted for the first time that object choice does take place as early as the oedipal period, and interpolated the phallic-oedipal phase into his sequence of developmental phases. The prominence of structure formation through identification continued, but no new object concepts are discerned.     

Sortal concepts, object individuation, and language

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary enterprise. This review highlights how the philosophical notion of a 'sortal'--a concept that provides principles of individuation and principles of identity - has been introduced into cognitive developmental psychology. Although the notion 'sortal' originated in metaphysics, importing it into the cognitive sciences has bridged a gap between philosophical and psychological discussions of concepts and has generated a fruitful and productive research enterprise. As I review here, the sortal concept has inspired several lines of empirical work in the past decade, including the study of object individuation; object identification; the relationship between language and acquisition of kind concepts; the representational capacities of non-human primates; object-based attention and cognitive architecture; and the relationship between kind concepts and individual concepts.     

The Concept of the Internal Object: Some Defining Features

The paper begins with an attempt to distinguish the self from its internal objects in terms of the sense of otherness. It raises the issue of the level of contouring of the object and the link with early development. It discusses a type of semi-contoured object using Grotstein’s concept of the background object of primary identification. It concludes with a technical discussion concerning the repair of deficits or basic faults in internal objects.     

Infant individuation and identification of objects

Recent studies of the infant's object concept have focused on the role of property information in individuation. We draw a distinction between individuation and identification. By individuation, we mean the setting up of an object representation (OR). By identification, we mean using the information stored in an OR to decide which, if any, previously individuated object is presently encountered. We investigate this distinction in experiments with 12-month-old infants. We find that for infants of this age, a shape difference between two objects has a large effect on both individuation and identification. However, a color difference between two objects has a large effect on individuation, but little or no effect on identification. This suggests that, somewhat surprisingly, information used to establish an OR may not always be incorporated into that representation.     

Character, character type, and character organization

This paper explores the relevance of the concept of character organization for psychoanalysis and argues for its usefulness in preserving what is specific to character. Character organization is viewed as a bridge concept between the observable and the structural, the role of fantasy and object relations in development, and as a convenient way of describing certain global phenomena not easily encompassed by the structural theory or compromise formation.     

The development of identification in Freudian theory

Once identification achieved its status as a specific psychoanalytic concept it followed a process of reconceptualization that emerged from the different clinical and theoretical contexts in which Freud approached and explained the phenomenon. In tracing the unfolding of the theory of identification throughout Freud's works, we have accounted for the following steps: First, in his correspondence with Fliess, Freud announced topics that would subsequently be theoretically processed. Second, in the first topography, identification was explored in the contexts of hysteria and dreams, and elaborated through reference to two psychic scenes with their respective modes of psychic functioning. Third, in the period of transition to the second topography identification was defined as a substitute for an object relationship and as a preliminary stage of object choice. Interlocked with the concept of narcissism, it produced a reconceptualization of the ego that led to the second topography. Finally, the tripartite model proposed in the second topography manifests the consolidation of the structuring function of identification, since the psychic structure is therein conceived of as resulting from the vicissitudes of object relationships.     

Projective identification: Pros and cons. An essay review of Samuel Slipp,the technique and practice of Object Relations Family Therapy

This paper is a critical appraisal of Samuel Slipp's book on Object Relations Family Therapy (ORFT), which uses the concept of projective identification as a central thesis in explaining interpersonal influence. Slipp's book is praised for its excellent review of the literature of object relations theory and the major schools of family therapy, classification of families according to complementary projections, and revealing case material. Interpersonal-Systemic (I-S) theory and methodology with its use of the concepts of empathy, interpersonal influences, search for intimacy, maintenance of self-esteem, selective inattention, and reflected appraisals is offered as an alternative view to projective identification.     

States of identity: a perspective drawing upon Fordham's model and infant studies

This paper examines the Jungian concept of identity and distinguishes it from projective identification and participation mystique which also refer to non-differentiation between self and object but involve projective mechanisms. Clinical work by Fordham and a psychoanalytic infant observation are used to illustrate early perceptual operations defined by experimental researches. These operations are understood to be expressions of the primary self which manifest themselves before the structuring necessary for normal projective identification. This paper attempts to describe an intersubjective experience between mother and baby that allows for their separate ways of relating, but does not depend on projective mechanisms that can exist only after there has been adequate development.     

On the relations between action planning, object identification, and motor representations of observed actions and objects

Recent evidence suggests that viewing a static prime object (a hand grasp), can activate action representations that affect the subsequent identification of graspable target objects. The present study explored whether stronger effects on target object identification would occur when the prime object (a hand grasp) was made more action-rich and dynamic. Of additional interest was whether this type of action prime would affect the generation of motor activity normally elicited by the target object. Three experiments demonstrated that grasp observation improved the identification of grasp-congruent target objects relative to grasp-incongruent target objects. We argue from this data that identifying a graspable object includes the processing of its action-related attributes. In addition, grasp observation was shown to influence the motor activity elicited by the target object, demonstrating interplay between action-based and object-based motor coding.     

Indexing and the object concept: developing `what' and `where' systems

The study of object cognition over the past 25 years has proceeded in two largely non-interacting camps. One camp has studied object-based visual attention in adults, while the other has studied the object concept in infants. We briefly review both sets of literature and distill from the adult research a theoretical model that we apply to findings from the infant studies. The key notion in our model of object representation is the `sticky' index, a mechanism of selective attention that points at a physical object in a location. An object index does not represent any of the properties of the entity at which it points. However, once an index is pointing to an object, the properties of that object can be examined and featural information can be associated with, or `bound' to, its index. The distinction between indexing and feature binding underwrites the distinction between object individuation and object identification, a distinction that turns out to be crucial in both the adult attention and the infant object-concept literature. By developing the indexing model, we draw together two disparate sets of literature and suggest new ways to study object-based attention in infancy.     

A model of the development of the early infant object concept

A computational model is proposed for the early stages of development of the object concept in infancy. Stages in development are represented as a sequence of grammars or rewrite rules that parse a set of perceptual phenomena. The infant's changes between developmental stages can be described by differences between the grammar rules that model each stage. The program replicates five studies by Bower et al on the development of the object concept and reaffirms the primacy of rest and motion parameters as explanatory invariants in early object-concept development.     

Inhibition and cognitive development: object,number, categorization,and reasoning

In the early 1990s, the concept of inhibition sparked a new surge of interest in cognitive psychology, both in North America and in Europe. In the framework of that research trend, it is proposed here that cognitive development cannot be reduced to the coordination–activation of structural units (as in Jean Piaget's structuralist theory and in the neo-structuralist models), but that development also often involves inhibiting a competing structure or scheme. This approach, which views the processes of selection–inhibition as age- and domain-specific, is illustrated by four experimental examples (from infancy to adulthood): object construction, number, categorization, and reasoning.     

MODES OF IDENTIFICATION: FREUD'S CONCEPTS REORGANIZED

The author examines Freud's conceptualizations of identification, Melanie Klein's projective identification, and Anna Freud's identification with the aggressor and altruistic surrender of one's own instinctual impulses. After demonstrating that Freud's concept primary identification refers not to a process but to the state of being identified, he suggests the substitution of it with Sandler's term “oneness”. He notes that hysterical identification, narcissistic identification, and introjection are unconscious processes that lead to a state of oneness and that they can be distinguished clinically in terms of the emotional meaning that an object holds for the individual. Furthermore, it is shown that the concept of identification with the aggressor represents a defense mechanism of its own and a specific mode of narcissistic identification, which together with projections and hysterical re-identification play a decisive rôle in projective identification and altruistic surrender of one's own instinctual impulses.     

Continuous information processing in conceptual identifications

Summary This investigation was aimed at the analysis of processes of the conceptual object identification. Three experiments were performed which utilized a response preparation paradigm developed by Miller (1982). The results confirm the psychological validity of a distinction between sensorily and categorially represented concepts proposed formerly by the authors. The process of identification of objects as belonging to sensory concepts was analysed in more detail. The experimental results suggest that it may be a sequential feature matching process which is characterized by continuous information processing. Early in the process the figurative features allowing an identification of an object as belonging to a more general sensory concept are processed. In following processing stages this first conceptual identification is more and more specified by an additional checking of more detailed figurative features. More importantly, the results indicate that the information about the general conceptual identity of an object is not only available early in the identification process but can also be used for the preparation of following processes or processing stages even before the object is fully identified. Possible influences of the early information on the control of the conceptual identification itself and on the selection and control of motor behavior are discussed.We wish to thank the following psychology students at the Humboldt University in Berlin for their help in performing the experiments: Kathrin Hänel, Erika Küchler and Christina Matthé. Furthermore, we wish to thank the two anaonymous reviewers and Johannes Engelkamp for their helpful comments on a first draft of our paper     

Sex Differences,Weapon Focus,and Eyewitness Reliability

Abstract

Two aspects of eyewitness identification were tested: sex differences in eyewitness reliability and an explanation of the weapon focus effect that is based on object salience. One hundred ninety-one male and female American college students watched a slide sequence that depicted a male or female target person enacting a simple behavioral progression while holding various objects. Afterward, the subjects attempted to identify the target person in a photospread and to recall physical details about him or her on a questionnaire. The results confirmed a predicted own-sex identification bias effect (p < .001) but did not support the object salience hypothesis. An interaction between subject sex and object indicated that men and women attended to and were distracted by different types of objects (p < .009).     

论宗教的认同性和别异性——一种方法论的探讨

在人类的群体性划分中,民族是一个基础性概念;民族是人类生存的一般规则和普遍现象。任何民族的形成和发展都是通过内部认同和外部别异实现的,这使任何民族都具有认同性和别异性。纵观各民族的发展史,每个民族在实现内部认同和外部别异的过程中,宗教都发挥有重要的作用。就宗教而言,它自身也具有认同性和别异性。宗教在民族认同和别异中的作用,可以表述为宗教的认同性和别异性对民族认同和别异的神圣化。宗教的认同性和别异性是个"中性"的概念,普遍适用于每个民族,因此,它也具有了认识各民族社会发展的方法论价值。     

Category-specific effects on the identification of non-manipulable objects

Theories of category-specific effects on visual object identification predict easier identification of non-living than living objects. The Sensory-Functional theory credits greater representational weighting of the visual properties of living objects independent of greater weighting of the functional properties of non-living objects. It predicts a lost or reversed non-living advantage for non-manipulable objects. Normal participants matched pictures of non-manipulable objects with words describing three levels of identity while visual object similarity, and concept familiarity were controlled. Consistent with the Sensory-Functional theory, living objects were matched faster than non-living objects. Concept familiarity facilitated subordinate matches. Visual similarity hampered subordinate matches and facilitated basic matches.     

Contour-based object identification and segmentation: Stimuli,norms and data,and software tools

We summarize five studies of our large-scale research program, in which we examined aspects of contour-based object identification and segmentation, and we report on the stimuli we used, the norms and data we collected, and the software tools we developed. The stimuli were outlines derived from the standard set of line drawings of everyday objects by Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). We used contour curvature as a major variable in all the studies. The total number of 1,500 participants produced very solid, normative identification rates of silhouettes and contours, straight-line versions, and fragmented versions, and quite reliable benchmark data about saliency of points and object segmentation into parts. We also developed several software tools to generate stimuli and to analyze the data in nonstandard ways. Our stimuli, norms and data, and software tools have great potential for further exploration of factors influencing contour-based object identification, and are also useful for researchers in many different disciplines (including computer vision) on a wide variety of research topics (e.g., priming, agnosia, perceptual organization, and picture naming). The full set of norms, data, and stimuli may be downloaded fromwww.psychonomic.org/archive/.