ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the direction of development of the internal objects insofar as it is reflected in the imaginative conception of the inside of the internal mother. The general movement is clearly from a vast space, undifferentiated and simply containing all forms of life—the Earth Mother—to a compartmentalized but largely partial object mother whose functions for the child determine its imaginative constructions. This unintegrated interior is formed in clusters around the assumption of analogy between the infant's experiences of his own orifices vis-à-vis the mother's services. Odyssey is a compelling image of the function of the internal father on his return, through the act of love, to rid the internal mother of the persecutors and projected rubbish of the bad and naughty children.
