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In the same paper, Loewald proposes the concept of ‘degrees of internalization’, which implies shifting distances of internalized 'material' from the ego core and shifting distances within the ego-superego system, as well as transformations of the character of the introjects according to the respective degrees of internalization. Here, the superego is conceived as an enduring structure pattern whose elements may change and move either in the direction of the ego core or in an outer direction toward object representation. “Thus, elements of the superego may lose their superego character and become ego elements, or take on the character of object representations (externalization). …the superego has the temporal character of futurity inasmuch as the superego-ego ideal may be understood as the envisioned inner future of the ego. Conscience, as the voice of the superego, speaks to the ego from the point of view of the inner future toward which the ego reaches or which the ego has failed. It is suggested that the degrees of internalization, the distances from the ego-core, are temporal in nature, representing relations between an inner present and an inner future, although we but vaguely grasp the nature of such temporal structuralization” (1962, pp. 503-504). VI. Af. Roy Schafer Schafer (1968a,b) emphasized how, in addition to internalization, projection impacts self and object representations: “…projection clearly involves a change in the self and object representations. In particular, it requires a shift of content across the borders that have developed between the two types of representation. How might this shift be accomplished? Something must change at the borders. The boundary lines must become temporarily blurred or obliterated. This change implies a significant degree of dedifferentiation of the self and object, a regressive merging of the two. As Jacobson (1964) has shown, this merging itself constitutes a kind of pregenital union with mixed elements of annihilation and libidinal gratification. Furthermore, the subsequent redifferentiation of representations establishes the object as now being the possessor of the subject's own libidinal impulse: there has occurred an emptying out of the subject's own impulse into the object (Schafer 1968a, p.55). Building on Waelder’s (1930, 1951) principle of multiple function and mechanism of projection in paranoia, Schafer (1968a) also depicts the repudiated wish component within the formation of self and object representations: “ Following Waelder, it may be further proposed that these pleasure possibilities may be inferred from the form of the defence, that is, from the wishful fantasies and the shifts of representations and emphasis that went into the development of that form and are now embodied in it” (Schafer 1968a, p. 61). In this context, self and object representations, containing both the wish and defense, are essentially compromise formations.
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