The work of objectification

In this chapter, the author divides the work of contextualization into three major aspects: the work of objectification, the work of imagination, and the work of symbolization. In selecting precisely these three aspects of the work of contextualization the author have made use of Freud's original distinction between primary and secondary processes as well as Piera Aulagnier's rationale for adding a third level of functioning that is in some sense more fundamental than both. The author focuses on the fundamental process that Freud called reality-testing. The important point is that the work of objectification, in the author's sense of the term, has a dual meaning. It is, first, the process by which the existence of an objective, independent world is opposed to the existence of a subjective, internal world. Second, it is by extension also the process by which the existence of 'objects' is established, in the technical psychoanalytic sense of the word 'object'.