ABSTRACT
What is an object? In ordinary speech an object is anything that has material existence in the world. It is usually inorganic and most often man-made. That of course is not what psychoanalysts mean by an object. Our use of ‘object’ is based on the grammatical distinction between a subject and an object.The object is what the subject relates to, whether in the accusative, the dative or ablative form. Almost in defiance of usual associations to the word object, the psychoanalyst’s object is human, and, to make matters worse, it can also be immaterial. Our internal objects are thoughts, not things.
