5 | SELF AND OBJECT REPRESENTATIONS
A representation is a cognitive phenomenon, a mental symbol that represents an object from the physical world.10,12Imagine a pencil in your mind: give it a length, color, and texture, this is a representation. Mental phenomena that correspond to self and object representations are of particular psychodynamic relevance. These representations can be conscious or unconscious.
A self representation is a mental representation that contains the positive and negative mental and body characteristics of the individual —virtues and defects, strengths and weaknesses, etc.—: our physical appearance; our needs and desires; our cognitive, affective, behavioral, and interpersonal traits —a trait is the relatively stable tendency over time that a person has to present certain psychological characteristics­—13; and our ideal self —that which we want to become— and moral beliefs.14 In order to consider healthy the representation that a person has of him or herself, positive characteristics must predominate over negative ones — colloquially to have good self-esteem—, both positive and negative characteristics must be as congruent with reality as possible —for example, I could have the firm belief that one day I will become president of Mexico and this clearly will not happen— and finally, the self representation must be relatively stable over time, so that if the characteristics assigned to it change, they should not do so suddenly but over the years. The self representations that an individual activates can be inferred through behavior or through the patient´s verbal communication. For example, imagine that you have just diagnosed one of your patients with breast cancer, and that when she answers to the question, what do you think and feel when receiving the diagnosis, she says: “I´m very afraid doctor. I never thought I could be in a situation like this, but there is nothing I can do, I have to face this disease and overcome it, I will do everything I can and I will not be defeated.” Based on this response, it can be inferred that the self representation activated in the patient is that of a person surprised by the bad news, but brave and with a desire to fight against the disease, and not, in contrast, the self representation of someone who is defeated and hopeless.
An object representation corresponds to the mental phenomenon that represents an individual who is in the physical world, it is equivalent to the previously described self representation, but that assigns characteristics to a person who is not the subject whose mind contains this representation. Let us return to the previous case of the patient recently diagnosed with breast cancer and let us imagine that she now answer the question regarding what she thinks of the doctor who gave her the diagnosis: “I think that you´re just doing your job, doctor, and I thank you for informing me with the tactful way you did”. Again, we can infer that the object representation that the patient activates in this situation is that of a person, the doctor, who is responsible, kind, and empathetic.
These concepts are basic for the introduction of the next psychodynamic phenomenon: internalized object relations.