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the skull; and so the process of having something or someone in mind is but an act of translocation, and this is simply and readily accomplished by a representation.” In sharp contrast to the seduction of the mere transposition of one’s life to a miniscule drama in the brain is the theory of the extended mind (Rowland, 2013). Inasmuch as theories are best thought of as useful tools which can be employed when needed rather than as illustrative of true states of affairs, the notion of the extended mind is presently employed to alter the manner in which we consider object relations. Although this theory of the extended mind was originally introduced as applicable to cognition, it is readily and easily employed in psychoanalysis in theories involving the self or the person. In brief it states that the mind is not to be thought of as confined to a small place inside of the head but rather is extended to encompass persons and events in the environment. One of the best and easiest ways to think of this is by way of the phenomenon of “staring.” Experiments had shown (Sheldrake, 2013) that people are able to tell when others are staring at them without their being able to visually confirm this. Of course there are a multitude of ways to think about how the mind reaches out into the world about it, and indeed this is the “normal” way that children think about the world. However, we see the theory of the extended mind in our daily psychoanalytic practice in the form of certain particular transference configurations. When Heinz Kohut (1971) began formulating his ideas about the psychology of the self, he realized that some patients developed meaningful transferences in which he became a significant component of his patients’ selves. He was not an object of old which was reactivated by way of regression and which enjoyed a separate and distinct existence, but rather was a reactivated part of the self which experienced the analyst as a constituent of that person or self. These transference configurations were able to be categorized as either mirroring, or idealizing, or twinship transferences and were further to be seen as moments of normal self development. Inasmuch as they were essentially components or parts of a patient’s self development they were established as “selfobjects” as opposed to separate and distinct objects. They demonstrated how the mind goes beyond the skull to capture others as part of its expanded repertoire. All of us utilize others to join in the construction of our selves; and this is not a stage, which we pass through and overcome, but is a continuing process by which we regulate and maintain ourselves. Seeing others as necessary aspects of ourselves requires a modification of our psychology from a two-person psychology, which focuses upon the relations between objects, to a one-person psychology which examines the relations between the self and its selfobjects. The implications of the selfobject concepts goes far beyond those of object relations posited on drive gratification or drive frustration. They are in accord with Fairbairn’s (1944) definition of object relations theory, which denotes a set of psychoanalytic and structural hypotheses which place the child’s need to relate to others at the center of human motivation. However these “relations” or “relationships” are not interactions which are represented or replicated in the brain but rather are mental processes that are being realized in the world. The sad and unfortunate equation of mind and brain has led to this state of confusion. Although the mind is certainly generated by the brain, it cannot be seen as nothing more than the brain as so
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