This article is based on the assumption that the processes of the constitution of subjectivity as well as the epistemological thesis on the origins of the self have gone through important changes in the last decades. Regarding personal identities, this fact is expressed by the decreasing value of the idea that the mental life corresponds to a private and intimate psychic space. In the epistemological sphere, several disciplines have been challenging the equivalence between mental life and psychological interiority, and have been proposing new descriptions of the origins of the self that have been focusing the concepts of embodiment and action. Considering the notions of representation and action as main tools to account for different conceptions of subjectivity, this article examines an internalist model of the psychic life in contrast to another one that describes the self as an embodied agent.
constitution of the self; psychoanalysis; developmental psychology; embodiment; action