I need an answer for a question that has been bugging me for a while. So, I understand that reflexive pronouns needs to have a subject to refer to, or to be the reflection of. Then lately I've come across a sentence using a reflexive pronoun which was grammatically correct, but with the absence of the antecedent. So can a reflexive pronoun be used without an antecedent like this?
There is a picture of myself on the wall.
Best Answer
There are many uses for the word myself, and to treat it as only a reflexive pronoun is too prescriptive — so prescriptive, in fact, that it would be wrong. The use you give is indeed accepted as correct English, but for a rather tricky reason.
The first example that they give is exactly the use you're asking about. It's where myself means what it literally describes, my self. Suppose you were going to say my friend instead of myself. That would make sense, wouldn't it?
The word is simply being used in a different function than a reflexive pronoun. It's more like a contraction of the two word phrase my self. So it is indeed correct. The Slate.com article gives a lot of examples of both correct and incorrect usage.