ABSTRACT
Over the past several years we have been trying to understand the role of selfobjects throughout the course of life. When we tried to describe some of the psychological functions that other people play in the life of adolescents, children, and infants, it was easy to find vast and relevant commentaries on the issues that interested us within psychoanalysis. Although we disagreed sharply with some of the ideas of other analysts, we could discuss young people’s connections to other people within the context of the work of several others who had approached the problem in some depth. Their work, in turn, interdigitated nicely with many of studies by psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists that sharpened and clarified psychoanalytic ideas.
