Organon F

Volume 32, May 2025, Issue 2, Pages 116–149

ISSN 2585-7150 (online)

This article explores internal objects as a kind of non-existent and analyses the role of internal objects and internal object relations in unconscious thinking. My aim is to outline a project of ‘logic of the unconscious’ based on object relations theory. Drawing on the approaches of Melanie Klein, Susan Isaacs, Joseph Sandler, Thomas Ogden, and Linda Brakel, I clarify unconscious thinking in terms of the notions of primary process and phantasy and explore the nature of internal objects as background phantasy figures. In addition, using psychoanalytically relevant clinical examples, I analyse condensation, displacement, and transference as primary mental operations and suggest that considering internal objects as abstract particulars helps to clarify their role in unconscious thinking. Finally, I formulate a project of the logic of the unconscious as a logic of object relations.

Internal objects; logic of the unconscious; non-existent objects; object relations theory; phantasy; primary process.

Author

Andriy Vasylchenko

Affiliation

Czech Academy of Sciences

Address

Department of Logic, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Jilská 1, Prague 1, 110 00, Czech Republic

E-mail

an_vasylchenko@ukma.edu.ua 

Received

5 December 2023

Revised

27 November 2024

Accepted

19 March 2025

Publishers

Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences

APA

Vasylchenko, A. (2025). Internal Object Relations and the Logic of the Unconscious. Organon F, 32(2), 116–149. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2025.32201

Chicago

Vasylchenko, Andriy. 2025. "Internal Object Relations and the Logic of the Unconscious." Organon F 32 (2): 116–149. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2025.32201

Harvard

Vasylchenko, A. (2025). Internal Object Relations and the Logic of the Unconscious. Organon F, 32(2), pp. 116–149. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2025.32201

© Andriy Vasylchenko

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