Self-psychological Concepts Research Articles

Two spies: Espionage and empathy

ABSTRACT This essay is a self-psychological exploration of two Israeli field operatives, or spies, and their radically different experiences after retirement. The spies, whom the author calls Ariel and Jonah, worked in the 1970s and 1980s in various locales in the Middle East. Ariel and Jonah shared similarities in their abilities as spies but diverged in the way they were able to integrate into society afterward. One went adrift, while the other integrated and was able to find his place in Israeli society. Based on in-person interviews when the author was living in Israel and subsequent visits and phone conversations, this paper explores the way empathy proved effective for Ariel and Jonah when they were working as spies in the field but functioned differently in their lives afterwards. It incorporates core self-psychological concepts such as rage, mirroring, twinship and idealization, and explores the contrast between Kohut’s early conception of empathy as vicarious introspection, and his later conceptualization of what the author calls loving empathy. It also treats the notion of cultural selfobjects, including one’s country of origin and religious symbols, and the concept of generational trauma as an ancestral narcissistic wound that lies at the heart of insatiable feelings of rage and revenge.

Gilgamesh: The First Tragic Man

ABSTRACT Studying myths with psychoanalytic understanding is an attempt as old as psychoanalysis itself. Being the oldest written story, the Epic of Gilgamesh narrates the heroic journeys and the desperate search for the immortality of Sumerian semi-legendary king, Gilgamesh. In the present article, the main themes of the epic, comprising fellowship and fear of death, were analysed through self-psychological concepts of twinship selfobject needs and the transformations of narcissism. One of the major schools of psychoanalysis, self-psychology, investigates and understands human experiences from the perspective of selfobject experiences in which the psychological functions of selfobjects are utilized to preserve cohesiveness, vitality, and harmony of the self as extensively described by Heinz Kohut and other self-psychologists.

Psychoanalytic principles as a heuristic framework to bridge the gap between psychology and the law in SVP evaluations: Assessing emotional and volitional impairment

The legal concepts of emotional and volitional impairment in SVP evaluations are vague and ill-defined. This article reviews the legal terms of emotional and volitional impairment as they have been contemplated in extant SVP statutes, SVP case law, logical constructions, and limited empirical studies. To bridge the gap between psychiatry and the law, a broad, theory-based heuristic framework is furnished for understanding emotional and volitional impairment at a deep psychological (and intra-psychic) level. Specifically discussed are the concepts of transference, repetition compulsion, fixation, cathexis, regression, identification with the aggressor, and the object-relations and self-psychology concepts related to a loss of possession of the self.

Psychoanalysis and the Forward Edge Hit the Streets: The Analytic Service to Adolescents Program (ASAP)

This article describes the Analytic Service to Adolescents Program (ASAP), a joint psychoanalytic treatment and research project of Morton Alternative High School (MAS) and the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. ASAP provides individual and group treatment for students expelled from the regular high school for aggressive behavior, drug use, and gang-related activity. In addition, the program provides consultation to parents and teachers to more effectively parent and educate students. A forward edge approach, based upon certain self-psychological concepts developed by Heinz Kohut and Marian Tolpin, while addressing trauma, focuses on strengthening self-esteem and ambitions in these adolescents. Two clinical vignettes are presented, illustrating how this approach has proved effective in reducing anxiety and depression, while increasing regulation of affect allowing for greater cognitive and general functioning.

Calling for a Gestalt Developmental Perspective

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to address the need for a developmental theory in Gestalt therapy, and to discuss whether a Gestalt developmental perspective is possible (Part I). For this purpose, Gordon Wheeler's suggestion for a whole-field developmental model will be reviewed. In the second part of the paper, some basic concepts of Self psychology and Intersubjective systems theory (Intersubjectivity theory) will be presented to show how they bear similarity with Gestalt therapy theory. More specifically, the developmental ideas of these theories, and their possible contribution to the formation of a Gestalt developmental theory, will be presented. The third part will describe what a development-oriented Gestalt approach would entail.

The Interface of Self Psychology, Infant Research, and Neuroscience in Clinical Practice

This article focuses on the integration of self psychology with findings from infant research and neuroscience. While Kohut's psychology of the self provides a useful theoretical model for psychoanalytic practice, aspects of infant research and neuroscience offer specificity and nuance to basic self-psychological concepts. Kohut proposed that self-psychological psychoanalysis ameliorates derailed development through patient-analyst interaction, while a listening stance of empathic immersion begins the curative process of derailed development and sets the stage for reparative psychoanalytic work. Findings from infant research delineate much more specifically the nature of attunement both in early mother-infant and analyst-patient interactions. Findings from neuroscientific research delineate how early mother-infant experiences are encoded in implicit memory and explicates the emotional substrate of affects and feelings. This emotional substrate exists at birth and provides a means of communication both in infancy and adulthood. Additionally, infant research delineates the mutuality of the interactive process. Thus, both infant research and neuroscience add subtlety and nuance to basic self-psychological concepts. This subtlety opens up new ways of understanding patients and expands the clinical repertoire. Three clinical vignettes demonstrate how this nuance and expansion of self-psychological concepts are applied in the context of an ongoing psychoanalytic treatment.

The Selfobject in the Age of Technology

The author considers self-psychology concepts including the selfobject and influences on self-esteem in the observation and exploration of the significance patients assigned to their cellular telephones, computers, and other electronic communication devices. The intrusion of these devices in sessions and their presence in the patients’ lives is explored.

Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst

For an adherent of self psychology to write an unflinchingly critical biography of the admired founder of the movement is a major creative feat of empathy and scholarship, a feat that Charles B. Strozier has accomplished. While he valorizes Heinz Kohut, Strozier does not hesitate to relate his selfishness and narcissism, his lies and deceptions, his “protean sexuality” and “apparently fluid sexual boundaries.” The book explains the concepts of self psychology, including the “self,” the self object, and the idealizing and mirroring transferences, in clear English. Strozier has contempt for Freudian drive theory, terming it “absurd” and “ridiculous.” Since all psychological models are constructs and metaphors used as heuristic devices to elucidate clinical material, why not allow for pluralism and relativism in clinical theory? Drive theory may be a model of choice for some behaviors. Strozier spends a great deal of energy defending Kohut's originality against suggestions that some of his insights were derived from Donald Winnicott, Sandor Ferenczi, Erik Erikson, Carl Rogers, Carl Jung, and others. Of course all authors build on the shoulders of those who have worked before them. Strozier does not acknowledge the psychoanalytic theorist Paul Federn, who as early as the 1920s developed the idea of an autonomous narcissistic line of development and the distinction between healthy and pathological narcissism; for example: “Although narcissism was first recognized in its pathological form, it is unquestionably not a pathological residue of the past but the normal essential means for establishing the living psychic coherence of the ego” (Paul Federn, “On the Distinction between Healthy and Pathological Narcissism,” 1929).

All the Lonely People...Where Do They All Belong

The author uses humor and fosters empathy in order to establish a fragile group cohesion for five isolated patients at a group analytic training institute. Self-psychological concepts, in particular the alter ego or twinship transference, help explain the profound and painful yearnings of these unlikely group members, whose great need for relatedness was generally trumped by the terror of it. The group's poignant wish for affiliation (somewhat paralleled in the therapist's joining a training program) was similarly impeded by a fear of an aversive affiliation, a fear which for these group members remained understandably powerful after a lifetime of false and failed affiliative starts. The author concludes that it is these lonely people who should be (and can be) served by analytic group work.

The therapist as selfobject

In the treatment of severely disturbed patients in private practice, the author discovered that a shift from a traditional analytic approach to one that utilized self-psychological concepts produced improved success in the outcomes of treatment. These patients included those with narcissistic and borderline pathology in addition to substance abuse. All the patients had histories of one or more previous treatments.

The limits of systems therapy: The problem of intimacy

By placing so much emphasis on systemic thinking, marriage and family therapists have lost sight of the individual within the system. One of the limits of a systemic therapy is its capacity to deal with problems in intimacy, a central problem in marital therapy. A knowledge of individual development is crucial for family therapists. The two themes dealt with in this paper are 1) some concepts of self psychology which can be useful in understanding the fear of intimacy, and 2) at what point, in couples' therapy, it is advisable to shift to individual therapy for one or both partners.

Advances in group psychotherapy and self psychology: An intersubjective approach

The theory of the as applied to group psychotherapy has had particular meaning in this age and culture wherein people strive for independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency, but all too often at the cost of alienation from others. The much-talked about phenomenon of the me culture can be viewed as a product of the times we live in, but a closer look also reveals it to be a common compensatory response to psychological factors going back to an early period of life when a child's developmental needs were misunderstood, ignored, mocked, overvalued, or overwhelmed by caretakers who could not relate to the child phase-appropriately. In such a case, a foundation for good-enough object relations never emerged. Children who experienced little or no enthusiastic responsiveness from such caretakers, except perhaps by taking on a submissive, compliant false self, can hardly be expected to relate spontaneously and with mature reciprocation. This paper discusses clinical issues in group psychotherapy with narcissistic and borderline patients; but first a brief review of the principal concepts of self psychology will be useful, especially more recent developments. For a deeper immersion into the earlier concepts, Kohut and Wolfs article (1978) and Kohuťs last two books (1977, 1984) are recommended.

Idealization and Omnipotence within the Group Matrix

This paper describes a group where development is limited through idealization of the group conductor. The splitting which results from the group members' determination to meet informally (the pavement group) leads to `cure' only being obtainable through development of an idealized relationship with the conductor. Warm, emotionally involved, non-rivalrous relationships occur on the pavement, as do normal disappointing relationships. Within the group the conductor is often attacked and criticized, but the hidden idealization persists, together with the hopelessness of ever attaining the desired relationship. The personal networks of group members form a group matrix in which a persecutory authority permanently resides which will block the individual's maturation. At a certain point members must leave the group if they are to develop and mature. There is no potential for rapprochement with the omnipotent authority within the matrix. This authority is typically located within the conductor, but any member who attempts to establish the idealized relationship becomes the location for this authority, and the object of envious attack. The concepts of self-psychology (Heinz Kohut) are applied to the group and the matrix.

Self psychology, intersubjectivity, and group psychotherapy

The basic concepts of self psychology are presented. The three self-object transferences of mirroring, idealizing, and twinship are described and applied to group therapy. The therapist's role is: 1) to accept the patient's need to idealize the leader, the group, or the specific members; 2) to receive recognition and admiration; and 3) to understand the patients search for twinship. The group therapist also has the responsibility of teaching group members to have empathy for one another.

Unconscious Fantasy: Developmental and Self-Psychological Considerations

The authors view unconscious fantasy from the perspective of self psychology as a significant addition and emendation of the classical framework. A selective review of the pertinent literature is presented, followed by clinical material illustrating the contribution of self-psychological concepts to the understanding of unconscious fantasy formation.

City of Night:

This paper examines John Rechy's 1963 novel, City of Nigt, in terms of the concepts of self psychology. The protagonist's psychopathology is explicated primarily in terms of narcissistic issues revolving around his need to feel disired by older males and his inability to reciporcate that desire. Ample materical from the young man's childhood is provided in the novel which makes a self psychological understanding intelligible. His sexual behavior is interpreted ina positive light and its defensive and growth promoting features are highlighted: The author believes that a self psychological understanding of homosexuality results in a more sympathetic understanding than has been traditional in psychoanalytic theory.

Self psychology and the psychotherapy of psychotic patients: A case study

Self psychology has previously been employed in describing the treatment of narcissistic personality disorders. This article discusses the clinical application of concepts of self psychology to the psychotherapy of a psychotic patient. Empathy and the concept of empathic failure were very helpful in conceptualizing the therapeutic process. The two selfobject transferences of mirroring and idealization were both present in this case, and the recognition and interpretation of these transferences were critical in understanding the therapeutic process. The patient's delusional experiences receded and began to be less disruptive as the selfobject transferences emerged and remained in place. The resurgence of delusional material was usually indicative of a failure of empathy and a disruption of the selfobject transference. This patient's ability to regulate his anxiety and calm himself was considerably enhanced during the course of treatment. Self psychology and the understanding it provides proved to be of great value in the treatment of this patient and has wide applicability to the psychotherapy of psychosis.