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internalization of separate (‘good’ and ‘bad’ self-object) representations, with full integration only being possible on the higher cortical levels. In Kernberg’s contemporary exposition (2013, 2015), two phases of mentalization processes are differentiated: an early phase of mentalization, in which understanding of a present affect state develops in terms of an immediate object relationship; and a later phase, related to the background of self experience and the background of experience of others, contextualizing the immediate present in light of the (self) reflected past. Arnold Modell Over the past 50 years, Arnold Modell (1968, 1984, 1990, 1993, 2003, 2007) strove to define the paradoxical nature of the self, as both an evolving contingent product and an enduring core. This quest has taken him from Freudian theory, through Winnicott and Object Relations, to intersubjectivity and neuroscience. Modell was one of the first US analysts seeking to incorporate Winnicott’s thinking and clinical focus on the birth of the self, through mirroring and object use. The emphasis of creation of meaning through establishment of a transitional space between infant and mother became central to Modell’s initial theory of the self (Modell 1968). While fundamentally an elaboration of Winnicottian concepts, “Object Love and Reality” (Modell 1968) introduced two themes: the intersubjective aspect of the transference and the imperative of the self to make meaning of its experience as fundamental to human motivation (Kirshner 2010). Furthering his intersubjective thought as complementary to Freudian drive theory, in “Psychoanalysis in a New Context” (Modell 1984), he argued that the self is built not only from bottom up from biological drives, but also from outside in, through a dyadic interchange. In this interplay of two psychologies, an inside out version – the one person psychology – addresses phenomena like dreaming, symptom formation, and the inviolability of the private or core self; and the outside in – the two person intersubjective model of entangled selves – addresses the relational quality of all psychic activity. Both are active in the psychoanalytic process. In this regard close to Loewald and Green, he maintained that psychoanalysis provides not so much a restorative new relationship, but a new relationship to already existing objects. In the “Private Self” (Modell 1993), the emphasis on the hidden inner self, grounded in affective memory comes once again into the foreground, grounded this time in the neuroscientific research of Gerald Edelman. Edelman hypothesized that the brain’s capacity to re-categorize and re-transcribe memory throughout new contexts of life experiences has evolutionary value, to maintain the continuity of the self. For Modell, this provided a neurobiological basis for the Freudian Nachträglichkeit (après coup, deferred action), as well as for resolving a paradox – the ephemeral yet enduring self – now understood as both being valid within specific contexts. Going beyond Edelman, in his recent writings (Modell 2003, 2007), he adds the creative and affective dimension to re-transcription, which is his main
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