Commentary on Frank Summers's “Kohut's Vision and the Nuclear Program of the Self”

Abstract

In this response, the author agrees with Frank Summers's view that the goal of any analysis is the flowering of the nuclear self, and that Kohut's term, “nuclear self,” has not been sufficiently emphasized or understood by either self or relational self psychologists. The author also suggests that Summers's emphasis on the action program of the nuclear self is deeply attuned with Kohut's views and is crucial for us to hold in mind. However, the author takes exception to Summers's claim that the search for the nuclear self in an analysis occurs only after the transmuting internalizations of the selfobject transferences are completed. The author suggests, rather, that Summers's analytic stance is completely explicable within the context of Kohut's and E. S. Wolf's definitions of the mature selfobject transferences, and that Kohut and others focused on the hope and possibility of the analysand's emerging agency throughout the analysis.