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In her projective clinical work with children and her research in psychopathology, Nina Rausch de Traubenberg was led to use the concept of self representation and to construct a rating scale to evaluate it. This «operational concept» and the scale have been nourished in part by American studies carried out by projective psychologists encountered in the 1970s, who themselves were influenced by two major currents of American psychoanalysis of the period, ego psychology (Hartman and Jacobson) and theories of objet relations (Kernberg). The article reflects about the traces of these theorisations found in the notion of «self representation», about the diverse meanings it covers and its relationship with narcissism in the Freudian sense of the term.