SELF-PSYCHOLOGY

Heinz Kohut in the early 70's with the publication of his now famous monograph, The Analysis of the Self (1971)

Self psychology has burgeoned into one of the most significant analytic theories since Freud first introduced psychoanalysis

Having been trained in the theories of American ego psychology, Kohut established a reputation as a staunchly conservative Freudian analyst, winning him in 1964 the presidency of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

his deep concern for the many stalemated or premature terminations among his patient population, that eventually prompted him to question the very theories upon which he had staked his scientific surety and built his reputation.

Setting aside his classical theory, Kohut took the lead from his patients in discovering his theory of the self. In particular, it was the case of Ms. F., a woman in her mid-20's, who insisted that he be perfectly attuned to her every word.

whenever Kohut strayed from Ms. F.'s experience by offering an intervention that reflected even a slight revision to what she had arrived at on her own, she became enraged that he was ruining what she had accomplished and "wrecking" her analysis.

By relinquishing his clinical assumption that her anger was an expression of her resistance to the analysis, which he recognized was impeding his ability to grasp the fullness of Ms. F.'s experience, Kohut learned to see and understand things exclusively from her viewpoint.

He termed this mode of observation, “experience-near” based on complete empathy for her inner emotional experiences

in these moments when he captured her feeling of being misunderstood and offered a response that more or less reflected what she was thinking and feeling, he observed that her previous sense of well-being was quicklyquickly restored.

In time Kohut hypothesized that this sequence of disruption and reparation of the empathic connectedness between analyst and analysand is an inevitability in any effective treatment; at the same time, he suggested that if these disruptions of empathy are kept to an "optimal" (vs. "traumatic") level, they are not harmful but, in fact, are an essential ingredient in the development of psychic structure and analytic cure.

from an experience-near empathic perspective led to Kohut's understanding of Ms. F.'s need for recognition, a need he viewed as a "developmental arrest" due to empathic failures of childhood and that he later theorized to be a mirror selfobject transference.

Though self psychology also recognizes certain drives, conflicts and complexes present in Freudian psychodynamic theory, these are understood within a different framework.

Kohut maintained that parents' failures to empathize with their children and the responses of their children to these failures were 'at the root of almost all psychopathology.' [9] For Kohut, the loss of the other and the other's selfobject function (see below) leaves the individual apathetic, lethargic, empty of the feeling of life, without vitality, in short, depressed. [10] For the infant to move from grandiose to cohesive self and beyond, meant a slow process of disillusionment with phantasies of omnipotence, mediated by the parents: 'This process of gradual and titrated disenchantment requires that the infant's caretakers be empathetically attuned to the infant's needs'

Kohut 'highlights empathy as the tool par excellence, which allows the creation of a relationship between patient and analyst that can offer some hope of mitigating early self pathology.

For Kohut, the implicit bond of empathy itself has a curative effect

'Kohut argued that normal human infants are born with a nuclear self already in place (a biologically determined psychological entity).'[5] That self then encountered what he called 'the virtual self (an image of the newborn's self, which resides in the minds of the infant's parents).'[6] In optimal circumstances, the interaction of nuclear and virtual selves would 'lead to the child's gradual organization of a cohesive self'[6] - to the point where ideally 'a living self in depth has become the organizing center of the ego's activities.'[7] Along the way, however, would be the appearance of 'the grandiose self...the self that emerges out of the normal infantile experience of oneself as the centre of all experience, omnipotent'

Selfobjects are external objects that function as part of the "self machinery" - 'i.e., objects which are not experienced as separate and independent from the self

'Kohut describes early interactions between the infant and his caretakers as involving the infant's "self" and the infant's "selfobjects"'.[

Selfobjects are addressed throughout Kohut's theory, and include everything from the transference phenomenon in therapy, relatives, and items (for instance Linus van Pelt's security blanket): they 'thus cover the phenomena which were described by Winnicott[14] as transitional objects

the most important aspect of the earliest mother-infant relationship is the principle of optimal frustration. Tolerable disappointments...lead to the establishment of internal structures which provide the basis for self-soothing

In a parallel way, Kohut considered that the 'skilful analyst will...conduct the analysis according to the principle of optimal frustration

idealized selfobjects "provide the experience of merger with the calm, power, wisdom, and goodness of idealized persons

Kohut simply seems to blame parental deficit for all childhood difficulties, disregarding the inherent conflicts of the drives: 'Where the orthodox Freudian sees sex everywhere, the Kohutian sees unempathic mothers everywhere - even in sex

Drive psychology, ego psychology, object relations psychology and self psychology each have important insights to offer twenty-first-century clinicians