What are we doing when we’re talking to ourselves? I’m realising the key to integrating psychoanalysis into sociological accounts of reflexivity is to conceive of internal conversation as a form of object relating. We are quite literally taking ourselves as an object. Indeed that is the definition of sociological reflexivity. If we look at real world examples of this we end up lodged within the terrain of the everyday, as Bollas demonstrates in The Shadow of the Object loc 900:
As I have been planning this chapter, for example, I have thought from the second person pronoun objectifying myself to say: ‘You must include Winnicott and Khan because much of your thinking comes from their work.’ Even if a second pronomial identification is absent, it may be implicit, as for example, when I think ‘don’t forget to provide ordinary examples of this phenomenon before going into more complex clinical examples’: the ‘you’ is implied. This constant objectification of the self for purposes of thinking is commonplace. It is also a form of object relation, as Freud so sagely understood when he evolved his theory of the superego to identify that part of the mind that speaks to us as its object. Naturally this intrasubjective relationship will change according to the person’s state of mind. If I write on a topic in my notebook I am more relaxed and permissive of the fanciful idea than when I write for a lecture.
And from loc 911:
On a recent trip to Rome to deliver a paper, I had several occasions for working through different issues in the management of myself. While leaving the plane and heading for a taxi I was anxious about not making my hotel on time. I had been thinking in the first person for much of the flight: ‘I will do this, prepare that, see this, visit so-and-so,’ but as the taxi went slowly, my anxiety increased and I required some brief holding activity. I said to myself: ‘Damn it, the taxi is too slow and I will be late [anxiety increases]. Look: there is nothing you can possibly do about it, so stop worrying [slightly modified]. But people will be kept waiting [re-emergence of anxiety]. Don’t be silly [unfortunate use of a bit of psychopathy]. Anyway, there is nothing you can do and what will upset your friends here is if you arrive in a state, so leave it be.’ This mental work is an example of holding, which is a feature of the total aspect of self management that…
He observes that “Much of psychoanalysis is about the nature of intrasubjective relations to the self as an object” (loc 906). From a sociological perspective this matters as a way of explaining why people relate to their context in the manner they do. For example why might people in a similar situation act differently? From a psychoanalytical perspective it’s a question of how the psychic structures which have emerged through development permit of certain modes of relating to the self qua object. From loc 941:
I am particularly concerned to emphasize the necessity of asking how each person relates to himself as an object within intrasubjective space. Who is speaking? What part of the self is speaking and what part of the self is being addressed? What is the nature of this object relation? Is it a good-enough object relation? Is instinct permitted representation? In what way? As a demand? Or are instinctual needs elaborated into the wish so that they become part of the subject’s range of desire?
In this sense we can understand the self as an object relation. Indeed Bollas elsewhere plays around with the idea of subject relations theory as a corollary to object relations theory.
Mark Carrigan 