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VI Ag. Kenneth Gaarder Gardner (1967) found it useful to distinguish between internalized representation in the presence as opposed to the absence of the object . In the work of mourning, for instance, the individual must dis-invest that aspect of the internalized representation of the object which requires its presence but not that aspect which does not require its presence. In many cases of phobia, the presence of another person is required to protect him from the feared situation. This means the individual cannot maintain an internalized representation of the needed person in his absence because negative feelings lead to destruction of the internalization. In analytic treatment there are three stages: first, the patient's not having an internalized representation of the analyst apart from the global transferences attributed to him; second, a consensus between patient and analyst but only when the latter is present; and finally, a consensual representation in the patient that exists in the absence of the analyst. VI Ah. Charles Rycroft Rycroft (1968) coined the term ‘ mental representation’ , denoting the “relatively permanent image” (p. 142) of something that has been previously perceived. Used synonymously with ‘psychic representation’, ‘mental image’, ‘memory image’, mnemic image’, it underscores the distinction between ‘external reality and ‘psychic reality’, highlighting that representations of self and object are thus mental constructs. According to Rycroft, the construction of mental representation is influenced by the gradient of drive activity and the level of ego maturity at the time when the representation is formed, as well as by the prevalent socio-cultural idiom, and the ‘objective qualities’ of the object. Self representation in turn reflects comparable influences and it is, at its core, an amalgam of diverse self representations. VI. Ai. David Beres and Edward Joseph Beres and Joseph (1970) define mental representation as an unconscious psychic organization whose nature, while not known, is capable of evocation in consciousness as symbol, image, fantasy, thought, or affect, which are the bases of all psychic derivatives and their modes of functioning in man. They saw the significance of the concept of mental representation in its heuristic value. In this perspective, mental representation is based on memory traces of perceptual experiences . Perception involves external stimulation acting on sense organs which activates nerve impulses that are transmitted to the brain where a further synthesis results in a mental registration. In man, mental registration is the basis of a mental representation. Freud defined instinct (id) as the mental representation of internal stimuli reaching the mind. It is the cathected and countercathected mental representations that are involved in intrapsychic conflict. Superego structuralization is the transposition of mental representations of the parental figures as regulating agents, to mental representation of the self
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