Full context:   Those pronouns called "possessive" do not invariably mark possession, but apply, according to the situation in question, to one or another of the four relational modes: if I call forth the image of my ballpoint pen, my cat purring underneath the table, my state of health, or my text, the possessive indicates, respectively, ownership, relation, integration and interlinking. My ballpoint pen is an object exterior to myself: I use it, I may exchange it for another item of its class, it exists only to serve my needs. My cat is a being with whom I maintain a particular relation: she has her own desires, her own moods, her own tricks, and I have mine. When I speak of my health, I find it difficult to imagine that I speak of anything other than myself. Finally, the text that I am in process of writing is exterior to me, for I must adapt myself to numerous constraints, but at the same time it is, as I mean to develop it, a reflection of my understanding of a particular language and a mode of thought that are not unique to myself: by the act of writing, I inevitably subject myself to the infrastructure of a particular language and to a mental universe that predated my own existence.