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dominated by positive affects are opposed to negative representations of self and object where aggressive, frustrated affects dominate. Under these conditions, no integrated view of self or object exists. Rather self and object are split or dissociated into idealized and/or persecutory part-object representation. If mother-child interactions are dominated by aggressive affect, the integration required for ego identity is forestalled resulting in borderline personality disorder. Specifically, as it concerns narcissism, the investment is in a ‘pathological self structure’ (‘grandiose self’), containing ‘real self’, ideal self, and ideal object representations. However, if in the first three years of life, developmental conditions allow for the tolerance of ambivalence, of combined positive and negative emotional relations with the same external objects, the child can develop an integrated sense of self (‘normal self’, realistic self concept) and the capacity for an integrated view of significant others. Here, the achievement of self and object constancy, allows for the formation of ego identity. The resulting internal structuralization delimits the id and gives rise to an ego capable of sublimatory functions allowing for the adaptive expression of emotional needs regarding sexuality, dependency, autonomy, and aggressive/assertive self affirmation. Internalized object relations that include ethically derived demands and prohibitions transmitted in the early interactions of the infant with his psychosocial environment are integrated into the Super-ego. This more integrated (neurotic, ‘normal’) level of personality organization allows for intrapsychic inter-systemic conflicts between all three agencies of Id, Ego, and Super-Ego (drive-defense conflicts). Here, the predominant mode of defense is repression. In his recent efforts to correlate psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory and affective neuroscience, Kernberg (2015) substantiates how current developmental affective neuroscientic research (Gergely and Unoka 2011) into various brain structures, circuits, and neurotransmitters supports the psychoanalytic hypotheses of gradual internalization of separate (‘good’ and ‘bad’ self-object) representations, with full integration only being possible on the higher cortical levels.
VI. Cb. Eric Marcus (1999): Ego Psychological & Conflict Theory Reformulation of Thing Presentation
In his own vision of integration, Marcus puts forth and reformulation of ‘thing presentation’ as a type of symbolic presentation in which affect is represented in a perceptual mode. He writes: “Freud (1915) used the term object presentation to refer to the central nervous system's encoding of mental representation. He believed the object presentation had two components: a verbal component, or word presentation , and a visual component, the thing presentation. Words are capable of rendering concepts and abstraction directly. Thing presentations do so through the somatosensory medium of physical objects, often visually presented. They are symbolic affect representations in perceptual form. Percept-affect condensations are used as metaphors to express emotionally meaningful concepts. This transmodal processing allows concepts to take into account analog
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