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acquires self and object representations with good (loving) or bad (aggressive) valences depending on the experiences of gratification or frustration with the mother. In this context, Self concepts were seen as complex structures including “the unconscious, pre- conscious, and conscious intrapsychic representation of the bodily and mental self in the system ego” (Jacobson 1964, p 19). Her conceptualization of representation referred to “the experiential impact of internal representations”, which were “subject to distortion and modification irrespective of physical reality” (Fonagy, 2001, p. 56). In her revision of Freud’s ideas about the development of libido and aggression, she emphasized the child’s experience of herself in her environment, analogical to what Sandler and Rosenblatt (1962) termed the ‘representational world’ (below). Analogically to their view, Jacobson, saw such representational world as derived from an innate psychobiological substrate. However, she emphasized that the instinctual drives were not ‘givens’ but rather ‘innate potentials’ that were shaped both by internal maturational factors as well as by external stimuli, particularly in the context of early relationships, which in turn shaped the child’s representational world. This biological approach allowed her to maintain ties with earlier drive/structural models. Jacobson’s (1964) integration of classical metapsychological theory with the phenomenology of human experience, especially her proposition that the instinctual drives are ‘innate potentials’, shaped by inner maturational processes as well as by environmental factors, her work is often seen as a precursor of Hans Loewald’s and Otto Kernberg’s theoretical modifications and integrations, as well as a forerunner of various contemporary intersubjective perspectives. Jacobson’s formulations also contributed a theoretical background for Margaret Mahler’s (1972) research on autistic and symbiotic childhood psychosis, and for her conceptualization of separation-individuation. Together with Sandler’s and Rosenblatt’s conceptualization of the ‘Representational World’, Jacobson’s formulations of self and object representations of her “Self and Object World” linked the drive-bound models of mind with the object relational ones and provided the underpinnings of psychodynamic processes in the context of the object relations, refining the theoretical lens through which number of other conceptualizations could be seen. For instance, primary narcissism could be now viewed as libidinal investment of the self- representations, and object love could be viewed as shifting of this investment to an object representation (Akhtar 2009). VI. Ad. Hans Loewald Loewald (1962) wrote about a relationship between internalization, representation and temporality, in relation to superego. He wrote: “…the superego, an enduring structure whose elements may change, has important relations to the internal representation of the temporal mode future” (p. 483).
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