Self psychology
Encyclopedia
Self Psychology is a school of psychoanalytic theory
and therapy created by Heinz Kohut
and developed in the United States
at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis
. Self psychology explains psychopathology as being the result of disrupted or unmet developmental
needs. Essential to understanding Self psychology are the concepts of empathy
, self-object, mirroring, idealising, alter ego/twinship and the tripolar self. Though self psychology also recognizes certain drives, conflicts and complexes present in Freudian psychodynamic theory, these are understood within a different framework.
would call a new paradigm.'
Kohut argued that therapy should be more involved with the patient than with analytical theories. In other words, to make therapy work, one needs to address the patient's self.
'Kohut argued that normal human infants are born with a nuclear self already in place (a biologically determined psychological entity).' 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).' In optimal circumstances, the interaction of nuclear and virtual selves would 'lead to the child's gradual organization of a cohesive self - to the point where ideally 'a living self in depth has become the organizing center of the ego's activities .' 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' - in Freud's words, ' His Majesty the Baby, as we once fancied ourselves.'
For the self-psychologist, psychopathology is viewed in regard to how the self adapts and reacts to other objects; and in the therapy, the patient's self is also examined for indications of to how to approach the patient.
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'.
Correspondingly, to deal in therapy with earlier failures in the disenchantment process, 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.'
Kohut describes human empathy as a therapeutic skill. When a patient acts in a certain way, "put yourself in his/her shoes" - and find out how it feels for the patient to act in this manner.
Using the skill of empathy, the therapist is able to reach conclusions sooner (with less dialogue and interpretation), and there is also a stronger bond between patient and therapist, making the patient feel more fundamentally understood. For Kohut, the implicit bond of empathy itself has a curative effect; but he also warned that 'the psychoanalyst...must also be able to relinquish the empathic attitude' to maintain intellectual integrity, and that 'empathy, especially when it is surrounded by an attitude of wanting to cure directly...may rest on the therapist's unresolved omnipotence fantasies.'
The conceptual introduction of empathy was not intended to be a "discovery." Empathic moments in psychology existed long before Kohut. Instead, Kohut posited that empathy in psychology should be acknowledged as a powerful therapeutic tool, extending beyond "hunches" and vague "assumptions," and enabling empathy to be described, taught, and used more actively.
Observing the patient's selfobject connections is a fundamental part of self-psychology. For instance, a person's particular habits, choice of education and work, taste in life partners, may fill a selfobject-function for that particular individual.
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 as transitional objects. Among 'the great variety of selfobject relations that support the cohesion, vigor, and harmony of the adult self...[are] cultural selfobjects (the writers, artists, and political leaders of the group - the nation, for example - to which a person feels he belongs).'
If psychopathology is explained as an "incomplete" or "defect" self, then the self-objects might be described as a self-prescribed "cure".
As described by Kohut, the selfobject-function (i.e. what the selfobject does for the self) is taken for granted and seems to take place in a "blindzone." The function thus usually does not become "visible" until the relation with the selfobject is somehow broken.
When a relationship is established with a new selfobject, the relationship connection can "lock in place" quite powerfully, and the pull of the connection may affect both self and selfobject. Powerful transference
, for instance, is an example of this phenomenon.
The contrast is what Kohut called "optimal frustration"; and he considered that, 'as holds true for the analogous later milieu of the child, 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.'
Suboptimal frustrations, and maladaptations following them, may be compared to Freud's trauma concept, or to problem solution in the oedipal phase. However, the scope of optimal (or other) frustration describes shaping every "nook and cranny" of the self, rather than a few dramatic conflicts.
In terms of 'the Kleinian
school...the idealizing transference may cover some of the territory of so-called projective identification
.'
For the young child, ' idealized selfobjects "provide the experience of merger with the calm, power, wisdom, and goodness of idealized persons".'
/twinship needs refer to the desire in early development to feel alikeness to other human beings. Freud had early noted that 'The idea of the "double"...sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which holds sway in the mind of the child.' Lacan highlighted 'the mirror stage
...of a normal transitivism. The child who strikes another says that he has been struck; the child who sees another fall, cries.' In 1960, 'Arlow
observed, "The existence of another individual who is a reflection of the self brings the experience of twinship in line with the psychology of the double, of the mirror image and of the double".'
Kohut pointed out that 'fantasies, referring to a relationship with such an alter ego or twin (or conscious wishes for such a relationship) are frequently encountered in the analysis of narcissistic personalities', and termed their transference activation 'the alter-ego transference or the twinship.'
As development continues, so a greater degree of difference from others can be accepted.
Kohut argued that 'reactivation of the grandiose self in analysis occurs in three forms: these relate to specific stages of development...(1) The archaic merger through the extension of the grandiose self; (2) a less archaic form which will be called alter-ego transference or twinship; and (3) a still less archaic form...mirror transference.
Alternately, self psychologists 'divide the selfobject transference into three groups: (1) those in which the damaged pole of ambitions attempts to elicit the confirming-approving response of the selfobject (mirror transference); (2) those in which the damaged pole of ideals searches for a selfobject that will accept its idealisation (idealising transference); and those in which the damaged intermediate area of talents and skills seeks...alter ego transference.'
The tripolar self forms as a result of the needs of an individual binding with the interactions of other significant persons within the life of that individual.
During Jung's midlife crisis, after his break with Freud, arguably 'the focus of the critical years had to be a struggle with narcissism: the loss of an idealized other, grandiosity in the sphere of the self, and resulting periods of narcissistic rage.' Only as he worked through to 'a new sense of himself as a person separate from Freud' could Jung emerge as an independent theorist in his own right.
On the assumption that 'the western self is embedded in a culture of narcissism
...implicated in the shift towards postmodernity', opportunities for making such applications will probably not decrease in the foreseeable future.
, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and object relations theory
.
From the perspective of drive theory, Kohut appears 'as an important contributor to analytic technique and as a misguided theoretician...introduces assumptions that simply clutter up basic theory. The more postulates you make, the less their explanatory power becomes.' Offering no technical advances on standard analytic methods in 'his breathtakingly unreadable The Analysis of the Self ', 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.'
To the Lacanian, Kohut's exclusive 'concern with the imaginary', to the exclusion of the Symbolic
meant that 'not only the patient's narcissism is in question here, but also the analyst's narcissism.' The danger in 'the concept of the sympathetic or empathic analyst who is led astray towards an ideal of devotion and samaritan helping...[ignoring] its sadistic underpinnings' seemed only too clear.
From an object relations perspective, Kohut 'allows no place for internal determinants. The predicate is that a person's psychopathology is due to unattuned selfobjects, so all the bad is out there and we have a theory with a paranoid basis.' At the same time, 'any attempt at "being the better parent" has the effect of deflecting, even seducing, a patient from using the analyst or therapist in a negative transference...the empathic analyst, or "better" parent.'
With the passage of time, and the eclipse of grand narrative
, it may now be possible to see the several strands of psychoanalytic theory less as fierce rivals and more 'as complementary partners. Drive psychology, ego psychology, object relations psychology and self psychology each have important insights to offer twenty-first-century clinicians.'
Psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalytic theory refers to the definition and dynamics of personality development which underlie and guide psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy. First laid out by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work...
and therapy created by Heinz Kohut
Heinz Kohut
Heinz Kohut was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of Self psychology, an influential school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory which helped transform the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches.-Early life:Kohut was born...
and developed in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis
Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis
The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis is a center for psychoanalytic research, training, and education that is located on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. The institute provides professional training in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy...
. Self psychology explains psychopathology as being the result of disrupted or unmet developmental
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
needs. Essential to understanding Self psychology are the concepts of empathy
Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion. The English word was coined in 1909 by E.B...
, self-object, mirroring, idealising, alter ego/twinship and the tripolar self. Though self psychology also recognizes certain drives, conflicts and complexes present in Freudian psychodynamic theory, these are understood within a different framework.
Origins
Kohut came to psychoanalysis by way of neurology and psychiatry in the 1940s, but then 'embraced analysis with the fervor of a convert...[and as] "Mr Psychoanalysis"' took on an idealizing image of Freud and his theories. Subsequently 'In a burst of creativity that began in the mid-1960s...Kohut found his voice and explored narcissism in new ways that led to what he ended up calling a "psychology of the self".' Thus the publication of 'his book The Analysis of the Self[1971]...was what KuhnThomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
would call a new paradigm.'
Kohut argued that therapy should be more involved with the patient than with analytical theories. In other words, to make therapy work, one needs to address the patient's self.
Self
Beginning by 'applying general psychoanalytic principles to narcissistic transferences, he [Kohut] went on to inventing a whole "psychology of the self".' Kohut's concept of self, and "defects" in it, is the core variable of self-psychology, where superego/ego/id and oedipal conflicts could be considered to be the core of Freudian theory. Kohut came to distinguish four key components in the development of the self: the nuclear, virtual, cohesive and grandiose selves.'Kohut argued that normal human infants are born with a nuclear self already in place (a biologically determined psychological entity).' 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).' In optimal circumstances, the interaction of nuclear and virtual selves would 'lead to the child's gradual organization of a cohesive self - to the point where ideally 'a living self in depth has become the organizing center of the ego's activities .' 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' - in Freud's words, ' His Majesty the Baby, as we once fancied ourselves.'
For the self-psychologist, psychopathology is viewed in regard to how the self adapts and reacts to other objects; and in the therapy, the patient's self is also examined for indications of to how to approach the patient.
Empathy
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.' 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.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'.
Correspondingly, to deal in therapy with earlier failures in the disenchantment process, 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.'
Kohut describes human empathy as a therapeutic skill. When a patient acts in a certain way, "put yourself in his/her shoes" - and find out how it feels for the patient to act in this manner.
Using the skill of empathy, the therapist is able to reach conclusions sooner (with less dialogue and interpretation), and there is also a stronger bond between patient and therapist, making the patient feel more fundamentally understood. For Kohut, the implicit bond of empathy itself has a curative effect; but he also warned that 'the psychoanalyst...must also be able to relinquish the empathic attitude' to maintain intellectual integrity, and that 'empathy, especially when it is surrounded by an attitude of wanting to cure directly...may rest on the therapist's unresolved omnipotence fantasies.'
The conceptual introduction of empathy was not intended to be a "discovery." Empathic moments in psychology existed long before Kohut. Instead, Kohut posited that empathy in psychology should be acknowledged as a powerful therapeutic tool, extending beyond "hunches" and vague "assumptions," and enabling empathy to be described, taught, and used more actively.
Selfobject
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.' They are persons, objects or activities that "complete" the self, and which are necessary for normal functioning. 'Kohut describes early interactions between the infant and his caretakers as involving the infant's "self" and the infant's "selfobjects"'.Observing the patient's selfobject connections is a fundamental part of self-psychology. For instance, a person's particular habits, choice of education and work, taste in life partners, may fill a selfobject-function for that particular individual.
Selfobjects are addressed throughout Kohut's theory, and include everything from the transference
Transference
Transference is a phenomenon in psychoanalysis characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. One definition of transference is "the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person's childhood." Another definition is "the...
phenomenon in therapy, relatives, and items (for instance Linus van Pelt
Linus van Pelt
Linus van Pelt is a character in Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts. The best friend of Charlie Brown, Linus is also the younger brother of Lucy van Pelt and older brother of Rerun van Pelt. He first appeared on September 19, 1952; however, he was not mentioned by name until three days later....
's security blanket): they 'thus cover the phenomena which were described by Winnicott as transitional objects. Among 'the great variety of selfobject relations that support the cohesion, vigor, and harmony of the adult self...[are] cultural selfobjects (the writers, artists, and political leaders of the group - the nation, for example - to which a person feels he belongs).'
If psychopathology is explained as an "incomplete" or "defect" self, then the self-objects might be described as a self-prescribed "cure".
As described by Kohut, the selfobject-function (i.e. what the selfobject does for the self) is taken for granted and seems to take place in a "blindzone." The function thus usually does not become "visible" until the relation with the selfobject is somehow broken.
When a relationship is established with a new selfobject, the relationship connection can "lock in place" quite powerfully, and the pull of the connection may affect both self and selfobject. Powerful transference
Transference
Transference is a phenomenon in psychoanalysis characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. One definition of transference is "the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person's childhood." Another definition is "the...
, for instance, is an example of this phenomenon.
Optimal frustration
When a selfobject is needed, but not accessible, this will create a potential problem for the self, referred to as a "frustration" - as with 'the traumatic frustration of the phase appropriate wish or need for parental acceptance...intense narcissistic frustration.'The contrast is what Kohut called "optimal frustration"; and he considered that, 'as holds true for the analogous later milieu of the child, 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.'
Suboptimal frustrations, and maladaptations following them, may be compared to Freud's trauma concept, or to problem solution in the oedipal phase. However, the scope of optimal (or other) frustration describes shaping every "nook and cranny" of the self, rather than a few dramatic conflicts.
Idealizing
Kohut saw idealizing as a central aspect of early narcissism. 'The therapeutic activation of the omnipotent object (the idealized parent imago)...referred to as the idealizing transference, is the revival during psychoanalysis' of the very early need to establish a mutual selfobject connection with an object of idealization.In terms of 'the Kleinian
Melanie Klein
Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...
school...the idealizing transference may cover some of the territory of so-called projective identification
Projective identification
Projective Identification is 'a term first used by Melanie Klein to describe a process whereby parts of the ego are thought of as forced into another person who is then expected to become identified with whatever has been projected'....
.'
For the young child, ' idealized selfobjects "provide the experience of merger with the calm, power, wisdom, and goodness of idealized persons".'
Alter ego/twinship needs
Alter egoAlter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
/twinship needs refer to the desire in early development to feel alikeness to other human beings. Freud had early noted that 'The idea of the "double"...sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which holds sway in the mind of the child.' Lacan highlighted 'the mirror stage
Mirror stage
The mirror stage is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Philosopher Raymond Tallis describes the mirror stage as "the cornerstone of Lacan’s oeuvre."...
...of a normal transitivism. The child who strikes another says that he has been struck; the child who sees another fall, cries.' In 1960, 'Arlow
Jacob Arlow
Jacob Arlow was an American teacher, scholar, and clinician who served as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Arlow was an editor of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly from 1972 to 1979...
observed, "The existence of another individual who is a reflection of the self brings the experience of twinship in line with the psychology of the double, of the mirror image and of the double".'
Kohut pointed out that 'fantasies, referring to a relationship with such an alter ego or twin (or conscious wishes for such a relationship) are frequently encountered in the analysis of narcissistic personalities', and termed their transference activation 'the alter-ego transference or the twinship.'
As development continues, so a greater degree of difference from others can be accepted.
The tripolar self
The tripolar self is not associated with bipolar disorder, but is the sum of the three "poles" of the body:- "grandiose-exhibitionistic needs"
- "the need for an omnipotent idealized figure"
- "alter-ego needs"
Kohut argued that 'reactivation of the grandiose self in analysis occurs in three forms: these relate to specific stages of development...(1) The archaic merger through the extension of the grandiose self; (2) a less archaic form which will be called alter-ego transference or twinship; and (3) a still less archaic form...mirror transference.
Alternately, self psychologists 'divide the selfobject transference into three groups: (1) those in which the damaged pole of ambitions attempts to elicit the confirming-approving response of the selfobject (mirror transference); (2) those in which the damaged pole of ideals searches for a selfobject that will accept its idealisation (idealising transference); and those in which the damaged intermediate area of talents and skills seeks...alter ego transference.'
The tripolar self forms as a result of the needs of an individual binding with the interactions of other significant persons within the life of that individual.
Cultural implications
An interesting application of self psychology has been in the interpretation of the friendship of Freud and Jung, its breakdown, and its aftermath. It has been suggested that at the height of the relationship 'Freud was in narcissistic transference, that he saw in Jung an idealised version of himself', and that conversely in Jung there was a double mix of 'idealization of Freud and grandiosity in the self.'During Jung's midlife crisis, after his break with Freud, arguably 'the focus of the critical years had to be a struggle with narcissism: the loss of an idealized other, grandiosity in the sphere of the self, and resulting periods of narcissistic rage.' Only as he worked through to 'a new sense of himself as a person separate from Freud' could Jung emerge as an independent theorist in his own right.
On the assumption that 'the western self is embedded in a culture of narcissism
The Culture of Narcissism
The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations is a 1979 book by the cultural historian Christopher Lasch exploring the roots and ramifications of the normalizing of pathological narcissism in 20th century American culture using psychological, cultural, artistic and...
...implicated in the shift towards postmodernity', opportunities for making such applications will probably not decrease in the foreseeable future.
Criticism
Kohut, who was 'the center of a fervid cult in Chicago', aroused at times almost equally fervent criticism and opposition, emanating from at least three other directions: drive theoryDrive theory
The terms drive theory and drive reduction theory refer to a diverse set of motivational theories in psychology. Drive theory is based on the principle that organisms are born with certain physiological needs and that a negative state of tension is created when these needs are not satisfied...
, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and object relations theory
Object relations theory
Object relations theory is a psychodynamic theory within psychoanalytic psychology. The theory describes the process of developing a mind as one grows in relation to others in the environment....
.
From the perspective of drive theory, Kohut appears 'as an important contributor to analytic technique and as a misguided theoretician...introduces assumptions that simply clutter up basic theory. The more postulates you make, the less their explanatory power becomes.' Offering no technical advances on standard analytic methods in 'his breathtakingly unreadable The Analysis of the Self ', 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.'
To the Lacanian, Kohut's exclusive 'concern with the imaginary', to the exclusion of the Symbolic
The Symbolic
The Symbolic is a part of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, part of his attempt 'to distinguish between those elementary registers whose grounding I later put forward in these terms: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real - a distinction never previously made in psychoanalysis'.-The...
meant that 'not only the patient's narcissism is in question here, but also the analyst's narcissism.' The danger in 'the concept of the sympathetic or empathic analyst who is led astray towards an ideal of devotion and samaritan helping...[ignoring] its sadistic underpinnings' seemed only too clear.
From an object relations perspective, Kohut 'allows no place for internal determinants. The predicate is that a person's psychopathology is due to unattuned selfobjects, so all the bad is out there and we have a theory with a paranoid basis.' At the same time, 'any attempt at "being the better parent" has the effect of deflecting, even seducing, a patient from using the analyst or therapist in a negative transference...the empathic analyst, or "better" parent.'
With the passage of time, and the eclipse of grand narrative
Metanarrative
A metanarrative , in critical theory and particularly postmodernism, is an abstract idea that is thought to be a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge. According to John Stephens, it "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge...
, it may now be possible to see the several strands of psychoanalytic theory less as fierce rivals and more 'as complementary partners. Drive psychology, ego psychology, object relations psychology and self psychology each have important insights to offer twenty-first-century clinicians.'
See also
- MetacognitionMetacognitionMetacognition is defined as "cognition about cognition", or "knowing about knowing." It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or for problem solving...
- True self and false self: Kohut