ABSTRACT
Certain parallels can be drawn between the artistic and the psycho analytic process. The artist's creation of works of art and the patient's re-creation of the personality are both difficult tasks of the self in which selfobject needs are particularly strong, and in this chapter I shall show those that appear crucial to each. I also hope to clarify an issue regarding the use of Kohut's concept of the selfobject. The confusion has been noted by Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood (1987) -that selfobject refers to a vitalizing self-experience but is often used as though it referred to a person. As they state "It is often forgotten that the term selfobject does not refer to environmental entities or caregiving agents-that is, to people. Rather, it designates a class of psychological functions pertaining to the maintenance, restoration, and transformation of self-experience." (p. 16) .
