ABSTRACT
Vis-à-vis the objects both of the outside world and of the inner world it is rewarding that psycho-analysis distinguishes two kinds of fundamental relationship; yet one of these relationships can be constructed at the expense of, or more usually in addition to, the other form of communion. The two modes are the part-object and the whole-object relationships. The infant's first relationships are with part-objects only, that is to say with objects that are not felt in their own nature to be foreign and altogether separate from himself. The mother's breast and his own stool are primary part-objects, the entire and separate and self-sufficient mother the primary whole-object from whose self-inclusiveness there evolves the realization of the outside world of objects as such, whatever their special functions for the perceiver and although he continues, howbeit to a lesser degree, intruding projections into them, an activity that underlies part-object relationship. Not a philosopher, as was Berkeley, the infant is able in normal development to give ground on the question whether there is an outside world which is real, that is to say, separate at least, if not yet indifferent in some contexts to his own activities. But it will have been no more true of Bishop Berkeley than of other human beings that the object conceived as a whole-object may still be treated emotionally more as a part-object.
