object structures or relationships and current employment of these structures in relationships. Within this theory it is understood that the individual interacts with the actual other or object and with an internal other or a representation of the object. There can be images and representations of part of the object or the whole. Viewing the object as a whole provides a view of the capacity of the object to gratify or frustrate the individual. To view part object refers to a partial view of the object, whether it is experienced as good or bad rather than seeing it as a whole. When the individual is unable to synthesize incompatible experienced splitting may occur as a defense mechanism.
St. Clair (2000) stated that self-psychology explores how these early relationships develop the structures of the self. Self-representation refers to the mental expression of the self as experienced in relationship to the other and representation refers to how the individual psychically represents an object. The individual builds a personality according to internalization, a process in which regulatory interactions and environmental characteristics are turned into inner regulations and characteristics. Within the object relations theory, relationships with the object form the personality rather than repressions and drives. In summary, terms and concepts found in object relations and self-psychology include the following: object (that with whom a person relates), representation (how the individual possesses an object or psychically represents an object), self-representation (mental image of the self as experienced in the object relationship), part objects and whole objects (viewing the object as good or bad versus viewing the object as a whole), structures (psychological processes/functions which are organized and stable; id, ego, superego), self (the whole subject or experience of the person by the person), splitting (psychic mechanism, ...