Self Psychology

“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.”

— William Shakespeare

Ego psychology had enriched and broadened the arena of psychodynamic thought, but left two problems. First, it was a one-person psychology, treating the mind of the individual as a self-contained entity. Second, as its successes accumulated, people availed themselves of analysis whose problems were more deeprooted than the Oedipal-level conflicts addressed by drive and ego theories. Object relations theories addressed both of these issues, finding principles to describe the interpersonal dimensions of the psyche and concurrently addressing pre-Oedipal development and serious personality pathology. A very different approach to the same problems arose in the United States in the 1960s.

Heinz Kohut (1913-1981) came to Chicago from Vienna. He rapidly achieved prominence in the prevailing school of ego psychology and was widely anticipated to become Heinz Hartmann’s successor. But his clinical experience brought home the shortcomings of ego psychology. He did not find object relations theory to be a satisfying answer because it was so abstract, seemingly too distant from human experience to be of scientific verifiability or clinical utility. He reformulated the theories of the mind in a radical fashion as self psychology. Its critical elements are the normality of narcissism, the centrality of selfobject experiences, and the role of empathy in development, investigation, and treatment.

THE SELF AND SELFOBJECTS

Self psychology rejects the notions of drive and structure as artificial constructs divorced from experience. Kohut saw them as simply unnecessary for a description of the mind. The only structure for which he saw a purpose was the self. Freud had not differentiated between self and ego. (He used the German word for self, das Ich, to name what was subsequently translated as “ego.”) Hartmann, describing the ego in greater detail, defined the self as the representation of the whole person within the structure ego. Object relations theorists mostly considered the self similarly to be a representation of a special kind of object within the ego, parallel to the representations of external objects.

Eliminating the ego, self psychology defines the self as the central agency of identity and individuality, the constant thread of unique personhood that binds life’s experiences. Metaphorically, it is considered a structure because it is continuous and changes only very slowly. It is a “supraordinate” construct that comprises the entire range of experience over time. But the self cannot be directly observed or experienced and is known only by the manifestations to which it gives rise: features of self-esteem and of distress.

Kohut’s observations, like those of the object relations theorists, led him to conclude that the self cannot exist in isolation. He posited a self that accumulates experiences of interaction with others in the environment. These interactions shared between self and other are selfobject experiences, usually known less clumsily as selfobjects. Note that the selfobject of self psychology is not an external person, a
structure of its own, or even an internal representation of another (as in object relations theory). Rather it is an experience necessary for the nurture and/or maintenance of the self.

The need for selfobjects is a lifelong one. There is no self without selfobjects, and this dynamic network of experience is called the selfobject matrix. Much as Winnicott had rejected the need for the structure ego and proceeded to describe the evolution of energy of the self in a world of objects, Kohut elucidated the evolution of the self within the selfobject matrix.

THE BIPOLAR SELF

If the self is the center, or the entirety, of mental life, then narcissism can no longer be seen as a transitional phase or as a pathological residue in adult life. Recognizing narcissism as a lifelong focus, self psychology defines the needs of the developing self that foster healthy narcissism and the balances that must be struck to avoid pathological manifestations of narcissistic development. Giving a framework to what he heard from patients, Kohut postulated the existence of the bipolar self. The two poles of the selfobject matrix that define the development and maintenance of the self are the pole of self-assertive ambitions and the pole of values and ideals. (See Figure 6-1.)

The presence of a mirroring selfobject (a parent or other vital figure who reflects positively the qualities, capacities, and accomplishments of the self) fosters the emergence of the grandiose self. At the same time, the presence of an idealizable selfobject (a person, figure, or function that provides goals and aims for the developing self) fosters the emergence of an internalized figure of ideals and aspirations, the idealized parental imago. The two poles sing a duet: “I am good” and “I can be great.”

Only gold members can continue reading. Log In or Register to continue