An object relation is a psychic structure consisting of a self-image, an image of the other, and the feeling that connects them. These units, established early in life, are the building blocks of the ego and the psychic determinants of most personality patterns.

We have seen so far that awareness of the self-image brings about the experience of space, or of the mind as openness. In other words, dissolution of boundaries imposed by the self frees space. It literally expands the mind. Understanding this dynamic relation between self-image and space, we can theorize about the development of psychic structure: The development of the self-image simply represents a gradual building and structuralization of boundaries in the mind space. Here we see the relationship between mind as content and mind as ground. Space is mind as ground. Mind as content is a result of boundaries in this space. In fact, these boundaries are the mind as content, are what constitutes the psychic structure. The neonate is born with no boundaries in its mind space, i.e., with no psychic structure. Its mind is just space, openness with no boundaries, physical or mental. This assumption is consistent with the notion of the undifferentiated matrix in object relations theory (Hartmann), with some difference: The absence of boundaries in the neonatal matrix is usually considered a state of nondifferentiation, whereas our perspective sees the matrix as the lack of boundaries.

Given our understanding of mind as space, we can see then that the separation-individuation process that Mahler speaks of not only builds the psychic structure and gives the individual his sense of identity, but more fundamentally, it accomplishes this by erecting boundaries and fixing them in space. In other words, the process of ego development is a process of bounding space, of building static boundaries in the openness of the mind. It is the carving of structure out of space, and the resulting psychic structure then is simply a structuralized space. This explains very clearly why when self-boundaries are dissolved, space appears. What happens is that the structuralization is dissolved, the boundaries are “melted.” When the structure is melted, the nature of the mind with no structure is revealed, and this is space.

We have tried to clarify the difference by understanding psychic structure as a structuralization of the substrate of the self by the imprint of a representation. The relationship between a structure and a representation that gives it its particular characteristics is like the relationship between a sculpture and the form of the sculpture, or between a building and its blueprints... In this way, the structure and the representation are inseparable, although they are not identical.

Psychic structure can be seen, then, simply as the structuralization of the substrate or consciousness, the ground of experience of the self, under the impact or imprint of the organized systems of images. Image is a content of organized memory, but structures the substrate of the self in the present.

As we have seen, the personality is a certain structure, more or less rigid, that organizes our experience under the aegis of a sense of identity. This psychic structure is based on the process of identification. When a person believes he is an angry person, he is identified with anger. He cannot see himself as separate from the anger. The personality is nothing but a particular organization of very basic identifications of early childhood, or as Freud puts it, “The ego is formed to a great extent out of identifications which take the place of abandoned cathexes by the id.” Essence, on the contrary, has nothing to do with identification. It exists purely as itself. There is no identification with past experience or any self-image at all. In fact, its presence is concomitant to the absence of identification with any self-image or psychic structure. When we are identified with a self-image we acquired in the past, we are not being our true nature. This means that for the realization of essence the first step is to disidentify, to see that we are not whatever self-image (self-representation) we have, that we are not whatever content we find, physical, emotional, or mental. This loosening of identification will loosen the rigid structure of the personality. More space will be created within us.