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The nature of selfhood is at least as problematic as its location. While the word self does not accumulate much resonance in Freud’s works, the latent importance of the term can easily be seen reflected in such concepts as the ego (a specialized aspect of self), the superego (the internalized other as part of self-structure), narcissism (self-love), guilt (self-reproach), and self-observation in dreams (Freud’s dream censor). The rise of ego psychology and identity theory, and the reactivation of the theory of narcissism in self psychology, may be regarded in some respects as precursors of the development of self theory. Self theory as represented by (but not confined to) Peterfreund (1971), Rosenblatt and Thickstun (1977), Stern (1985), Basch (1988), and Lichtenberg (1989) should probably be regarded as far from fully developed. Even so, and even granting the difficulty of defining selfhood, viable models of self—and the relation of self to other—are now available.

Freud worked with at least three models of selfhood: the layered, or topographical, model (conscious, preconscious, unconscious), a developmental model (oral, anal, phallic, oedipal, etc.), and the structural model (id, ego, superego). Various post-Freudian models of self, in the order of increasing capacity to reflect complexity, treat the self as a container of forces (libido, aggression), a container of representations (e.g., memories, wishes, fantasies), a structure of representations (id, ego, superego; internalized others), and a system of systems (including such systemic functions as were hitherto attributed to the Freudian ego).

Aspects of these ways of modeling self may be glimpsed in the following selection of observations and definitions. Hartmann makes a point of distinguishing ego from self (1964, 127). Jacobson follows Hartmann in using “selP’ to refer to the whole person (including the individual, his body, body parts, psychic organization). She remarks, “The self. . . points to the person as a subject in distinction from the surrounding world of objects” (1964, 6). Greenberg and Mitchell observe that for Hartmann the self is an object as distinct from the subject of experience (1983, 299) and that for Mahler the self is “less a functional unit than a critical developmental achievement” (300). Winnicott postulates the existence of a spectrum of selfhood integrity. He represents this spectrum in the form of dichotomous selves: the spontaneous True Self and the compliant False Self (1960, 140-52). Erikson’s (1950) identity theory, drawing heavily on Freud’s structural and epigenetic models, presents us with a picture of the self functioning to provide continuity through change. Lichtenstein, who postulates that identity maintenance “has priority over any other principle determining human behavior” (1961, 189), offers a transformational model of self as “the sum total of all transformations which are possible functions of an early-formed invariant correlation of the various basic elements of the mental apparatus” (1977, 241). For Bettelheim (1967, 56) self “is not an isolated entity. It is a totality of inner processes that develops slowly.” Searles (1966) discusses identity as a perceptual organ. In this connection he tells about a schizophrenic patient who repetitively knits “eyes,” which are “saucer-like structures with an aperture in the center” (26). When Searles asks if these “eyes” signify “Fs”, the patient confirms his intuition and makes a drawing of the world as she perceives it: “three large mountain peaks in the center, the head of an Indian prince on the left and a submarine on the right.” In essence, says Searles, “she conveyed to me how crazy is the worldview of one who has no reliable T with which to see” (27).

George S. Klein, in conceptualizing self, speaks of beginning “with the assumption of a single apparatus of control which exhibits a variety of dynamic tendencies, the focus of which is either an integration experienced in terms of a sense of continuity, coherence, and integrity, or its impairment, as cleavages or dissonance. I call this central apparatus the ‘self’” (1976, 8). Klein views self as effecting control, sustaining identity (a person-oriented element), and resolving conflict. Eagle goes so far as to claim that “without expressly stating it, Klein (1976) essentially reformulates psychoanalytic theory as a psychology of self” (1984, 87). As for Kohut, he writes confiisingly of the self as a content (“a content of the mental apparatus”), as a structure of the mind rather than an agency (a structure “cathected with instinctual energy”), and as a location (a psychic location) of self representations (1971, xv). Later he stresses the need for what he regards as complementary approaches: “a psychology in which the self is seen as the center of the psychological universe, and a psychology in which the self is seen as a content of a mental apparatus” (1977, xv). Astonishingly, the author of self psychology eventually confesses, “My investigation contains hundreds of pages dealing with the psychol ogy of the self—yet it never assigns an inflexible meaning to the term self, it never explains how the essence of the self should be defined” (310). A less biased observer might contend that Kohut simply fails to treat the topic with reasonable consistency.

Schafer, who emphasizes the wholeness and integrity of individuals as agents who must learn to take responsibility for their actions, including their thoughts and feelings, has proved to be one of the most incisive critics of ego psychology, identity theory, and self psychology in his efforts to avoid semantic confusion resulting from models involving split selves, anthropomorphism, reification, and various related errors he encounters in psychoanalytic writing. Schafer criticizes Kohufs conceptualization of self as suffering from an attempt “to mix a phenomenological, experiential, representational concept with the traditional structural energic metapsychological entities [such as narcissism]” (1976, 116). Schafer even attacks the term “selP itself because of the multiplicity of meanings attributed to it. Worse, the nominative phrase, “the self,” tends to reify the concept of self: “Like the thingness and agency attributed to identity, ‘the self’ concretizes or substantializes a term whose referents are primarily subjective or experiential and whose force is primarily adverbial and adjectival” (117). Moreover, he adds, “in some of its usages, such as ‘self actualization,’ ‘the’ self is set up not only as the existential referent of behavior but as, all at once, the motor, the fuel, the driver, and the end point of the journey of existence” (117). Elsewhere Schafer remarks, with commendable clarity, “Self and identity are not things with boundaries, contents, locations, sizes, forces, and degrees of brittleness” (1973, 51). He mentions that individuals’ representations of themselves vary enormously in scope, time, origin, and objectivity: “Many are maintained unconsciously (for example, self as phallus and self as turd), and many remain forever uncoordinated, if not contradictory” (52). Schafer distrusts the term self because of its protean meanings: it can signify “my body, my personality, my actions, my competence, my continuity, my needs, my agency, and my subjective space. Self is thus a diffuse, multipurpose word” (53). When Schafer addresses the concept of self-control he asks, “But just what does self-control refer to? Does it refer to a self that controls, and if so what is the nature of that self? Does it refer to a self that is to be controlled, and if so what is its nature and how does it stand in relation to the exerciser of control . . .?” (1978, 78). As far as Schafer is concerned, ‘to say that the self controls the self is to commit a category mistake in that controlling anything is one of the constitutive features, or one of the referents, of what we mean by self. We would not say that a thermostat controls a thermostat. . . . When someone is admonished, ‘Control yourself,’ a logical mistake is being committed” (79).

As it happens, there are models of selfhood that render moot such issues as the multiplicity of function attributed to self and the problem of the location of control. These may be referred to collectively as the systemic model. According to this model, self can be conceptualized as a set or system of indwelling interrelated governing functions of the whole person, a superordinate system incorporating innumerable subsystems, both physical ones with bodily organs such as lungs (the respiratory system), and others with less palpable, ponderable elements, such as memory systems, value systems, and sets of self-and-object representations. There is no need for any homunculus-like ego, a regulatory self within the self. Regulation can be thought of, metaphorically, as built in, or wired in. From a cybernetics point of view, the system is self-regulating, the function of control being systemically located, feedback-operated, and subject to the heirarchical constraints of a range of well-established priorities. A systemic view of selfhood conceptualizes awareness in terms of systemic monitoring, and lack of awareness (unconsciousness) as absence of access to specific behavioral programs. Inherently dynamic in conception (process-oriented), the systemic model accounts for both normal and neurotic conflict, the latter (less than optimal self-regulation) resulting from the activation of incompatible programs (see Schafer 1983, 82-95 regarding conflict as paradoxical action). A systemic model accounts for motivation as goal-oriented behavior (not necessarily conscious), the categorization of principal goals in the version of Rosenblatt and Thickstun (1977, 298-99) being the maintenance of positive affective relationships with significant others (attachment behavior), the satisfaction of basic (mostly physical) needs, and the goal of defending against the threat of any form of injury.

Though Stern remarks with plausible common sense that “no one can agree on exactly what the self is” (1985, 5), he himself may be numbered among the many psychoanalysts whose theory is compatible with a systemic view of self. (The extent to which analysts explicitly subscribe to a systemic model appears to be a function of the degree of their familiarity with general systems theory.) Well before the advent of systems theory, Sullivan wrote about what he called “the self system,” which for him is essentially “an organization of educative experience called into being by the necessity to avoid or to minimize incidents of anxiety” (1953, 165). The father of systems theory, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, insists that modern views of man have in common the principle “to take man not as a reactive automaton or robot but as an active personality system” (1968, 207), meaning, among other things, an open (as distinguished from closed), information-processing, dynamically self-regulating system. Peterfreund, whose application of systems theory to psychoanalysis remains the most comprehensive and valuable treatment, writes that “self, object, and superego representations are highly interrelated and interdependent; they form a vast system, and each part constandy feeds back information to every other part” (1971, 159). Rosenblatt and Thickstun say that the self system “can be conceptualized as the superordinate system, or the organism itself, encompassing all of the systems operating within the organism”(1977, 300). Bowlby, who embraces systems theory, tends to think in terms of groups of individuals rather than isolated ones, and he seems to be uncomfortable with person-oriented terms. He discusses the concept of self (1980, 59-64), yet makes litde use of it; there is, nevertheless, litde or nothing in his writing that conflicts with a systemic view of selfhood. Although Stern’s book on self theory (1985) does not explicidy refer to systems theory, nothing in his focus on epigenesis appears to be at odds with the systems model. Lichtenberg (1989), whose work derives partly from Stern and partly from self psychology, makes extensive use of the concept of system even though, methodologically, he does not appear to rely much on general systems theory as such. Lichtenberg, who defines “the self as an independent center for initiating, organizing, and integrating” (12), generates a schema of five distinct yet interactive motivational systems: a system regulating physiological requirements, an attachment-affiliation system, and exploratory-assertive system, an aversive system, and a sensual-sexual system. “As each system self-organizes and self-stabilizes, the needs that constitute the system’s core are met or fail to be met” (275). Basch represents the case for a systemic view of selfhood well when he writes, “The modern term psychodynamics can be understood as referring to the movement of goal-directed systems toward decisions. The process is measured by and expressed in terms of information. Thus is the once-mysterious psyche taken out of the realm of the supernatural to join science, the search for order in nature” (1988, 58).

While alternative models of self will doubdess continue to be formulated, it seems almost inevitable that the more valuable ones will incorpo rate systemic perspectives. If systems models of self become increasingly accepted in psychoanalysis, one consequence will be the total abandonment of libido theory and ego psychology, and sexuality will probably play a more modest role, as in Lichtenberg’s formulation. To a considerable extent the systemic model renders null the criticism, emanating from people like Lacan, of the idea of a highly coherent, specialized, centered self. For Lacan, self, at the mirror stage, is but the reflection of an alienated other (1977, 2-6); at a later stage (the Symbolic) self, or “subject,” is a subjectivity dispersed in language and culture. In contrast, the systemic model, which represents selfhood as an operational whole in spite of the number and diversity of its systemically located “parts,” preserves the possibility of virtual unity in functioning individuals without delimiting the complexity with which larger environments (culture) can be represented within the self system. Barratt (1984), who quotes Adorno as saying that identity is the primal form of ideology (251), mocks the notion of “a unified, albeit multifaceted, subject,” (139), or self, or ego, especially as favored by neo-Freudians and object relations theorists, but his own ur-Freudian model of man as fundamentally alienated and irreparably conflicted refuses recognition of the possibility of functionally unified selfhood such as may be said to be epitomized, in the vision of W. B. Yeats, by the dancer who cannot be distinguished from the dance. In any case, one can claim the existence of room in the systemic model for virtually unlimited complexity of the representation of self, other, and culture.

One can also claim that the systemic model accommodates both self-oriented and other-oriented perspectives on object relations theory. Stern declares that he places sense of self at the center of his inquiry (1985, 5), yet he manages to pursue his study with full recognition of the extent to which the other (mother) influences the development of selfhood in infants. In contrast to Stern, Lichtenstein’s other-oriented version of object relations theory may be thought to undersell infant individuality and potential for autonomy by defining identity strictly in terms of instrumentality (self as an instrument of an all-influential other). He writes, “Even as an adult, I believe, man cannot ever experience his identity except in terms of an organic instrumentality within the variations of a symbiotically structured Umwelt” (1961, 202), identity being experienced unconsciously by adults as variations on themes “imprinted” on them as infants by their mothers (208). In point of fact, Lichtenstein’s theory of selfhood, as identity theory, focuses as much on self as on other. As for the implication that self theory appears by its very name to favor self over other, what matters in the present context is that self theory models not foreclose in any way on the representation of other.

As a general rule, the idea that the development of self results in large part, though not exclusively, from the interaction of self with other appears to be beyond controversy. Object relations theorists have always been interested in what has come to be referred to as “intersubjectivity” (Atwood and Stolorow, 1984). Winnicott explains in a famous passage how a mother’s face, functioning as a mirror, allows the child to begin to experience itself as a self (1971, 111-18), and throughout his discussion of transitional phenomena he emphasizes that transitional objects are subjective objects. Kohut may be thought of as having extended the concept of the subjectivity of the object through his use of the term selfobject. Stern (1985) throws an abundance of light on the topic of intersubjectivity. As part of his articulation of the dynamics of the infant-mother dialogue, Stern speaks of attachment as self-experience (102); he illuminates the importance of “peek-a-boo” and “Fm gonna getcha” as games constituting “we-experience,” a self-other phenomenon (101-2); and he points to the way in which being with others promotes the beginnings of psychological self-regulation (75). In keeping with his declaration that “the sharing of affective states is the most pervasive and clinically germaine feature of intersubjective relatedness” (138), Stern develops at length the concept of “affect attunement,” which he defines as “the performance of [complex interactional] behaviors that express the quality of feeling of a shared affect state without imitating the exact behavioral expression of the inner state” (142). Rich and detailed, the rigorous accounts of the observation of infant-mother interaction of Stern, Beebe (1986), and others hold forth great promise for the better understanding of adult object-relations behavior.