A Volume (22) in the series The New Library of Psychoanalysis Published in Association with the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London The ways in which an individual (the subject) relates to and perceives other people (his or her "objects") has been a preoccupation of psychoanalysis in recent years and a plethora of concepts has emerged in the literature. In this ground-breaking study, Meir Perlow sets out to clarify the changing meanings of different concepts from context to context, discussing in depth the theoretical issues underlying them. The book begins with an historical survey of how mental objects have been understood in the various schools of psychoanalysis as they have developed. These include Freud and his associates; the object-relations approaches of Klein, Fairbairn and Bion; ego psychology orientations such as those of Schafer and Kernberg; and the conceptual and clinical issues involved in the major differences between the concepts. Finally, Perlow delineates three basic meanings of the concepts of mental objects as they have emerged in the literature and shows how they are related to ongoing issues in contemporary psychoanalysis. |