Spaces of the self in psychotics’ drawings

Background theory Stern’s observations of infants (Stern 1985, The Interpersonal World of the Infant, Basic Books, New York) changed the linear model of child development proposed by Mahler (early autism–symbiosis–separation) into a model of development defined as “complementary”. In the complementary model of mental development there is no longer any question when exactly our psyche, which starts out as a continuous structure, becomes discontinuous or separated from the space of the mother-environment. According to this model, symbiosis and separation are two autonomous spaces of development, which integrate one another as they develop, but remain fundamentally different. The self is joined to what is not-self and, at the same time, separated from what is not-self. Alongside a space of the self, which operates separately from the outside world, coexists another space of the self that continues to work, unconsciously, in symbiosis with the outside world.