self-object

Both of these defensive styles require a continuation of dependence on the self-object.

I guess you could basically say I internalized my brother-in-law as a self-object much as a child would do with a parent.

More subtly, Gardiner (1987) argues for the cultural and historical flexibility of the contents, but not the structure, of what Kohut calls the self-object.

An extension of Freud's theory of narcissism came when Heinz Kohut presented the so-called "self-object transferences" of idealization and mirroring.

For Kohut, the loss of the other and the other's self-object ("selfobject") function (see below) leaves the individual apathetic, lethargic, empty of the feeling of life, without vitality, in short, depressed.

According to Arnold Cooper, narcissism can be considered as a self-perceived form of perfectionism - "an insistence on perfection in the idealized self-object and the limitless power of the grandiose self."

Kohut called such conditions narcissistic personality disorder, 'in which the merging with and detaching from an archaic self-object play the central role...narcissistic union with the idealized self-object'.