In keeping with his view of psychoanalysis as an empirical science, Kohut’s psychoanalytic psychology of the self is essentially based on his experience-near conceptualization of his clinical observations of patients he regarded as suffering from various forms of primary self disorder. Just as Freud’s theories originated in his study and treatment of the neuroses and were subsequently extended by him over the entire spectrum of psychopathology, so did Kohut’s theories originate in the study and treatment of the analyzable self disorders and were subsequently extended by him over the entire spectrum of psychopathology (including the secondary self disorders, i.e., the neuroses). At first he considered the borderline states, together with the psychoses, to be characterized by fragmented selves that never attained cohesiveness, and hence to be in principle unanalyzable. He later modified his stance, developed a more relativistic view, and allowed for the possibility that patients who appear borderline in one therapeutic setting may show a capacity for a cohesive transference in another.
Kohut’s initial contribution in his by now classic monograph The Analysis of the Self (1971) was hailed as an extension of psychoanalysis because it analytically encompassed hitherto unanalyzable self disorders (originally called narcissistic personality and behavior disorders). Since he still used the language of classic metapsychology to express his ideas, however, few recognized in this first book an emerging new paradigm for psychoanalysis. By the time of his second monograph, The Restoration of the Self (1977), Kohut not only found a new language but also expanded his initial conceptions on narcissism into a comprehensive psychology of the self, intensifying the controversy that surrounded his work. With his posthumously published How Does Analysis Cure? (1984), Kohut further underscored the methodological importance of empathy, elaborated on the nature of resistance and defense, and advanced his understanding of the nature of psychoanalytic cure, thereby completing the broad outlines and many of the details of his new psychoanalytic paradigm.
It is my task to present a brief survey of the core ideas of self psychology; to define its basic concepts: the selfobject and the selfobject transferences; to elaborate on the centrality of the method of empathy (i.e., vicarious introspection); and to show how the theory of self psychology and its application in the analytic process depend on the systematic application of the empathic method of observation and on phrasing our interpretations from the perspective of the patient’s subjective experience. A clinical vignette should serve as an illustration of the manifestations of a self disorder as well as of the usefulness of some of the core concepts of self psychology, and will provide a demonstration of the manner in which these concepts guide the analyst in his or her participation in the psychoanalytic treatment process.
Empathy. As you may already surmise from the preceding introductory comments, self psychology and its approach to the psychoanalytic treatment process cannot be fully appreciated without the recognition of the fundamental role assigned to empathy. Freud demonstrated through his self analysis that introspection and empathic entry into his patients’ inner lives constituted the foundation of his psychoanalytic method. For a variety of complex reasons (not germane to this brief presentation) the methodological ground of psychoanalysis then shifted from the subjective world of the patient in Freud’s own work (and in the work of many subsequent generations of psychoanalysts) to an external observer’s view of the inner world, in the hope that this would make psychoanalysis more scientific. In part, this is what moved introspection and empathy out of their erstwhile central position in psychoanalysis.
In his seminal work on “Introspection, Empathy and Psychoanalysis: An Examination of the Relation Between Mode of Observation and Theory” (1959), Kohut reclaimed this central position for introspection and empathy (i.e., vicarious introspection) in the psychoanalytic enterprise, both in theory formation and in the treatment process. He later redefined the psychoanalytic method as the analyst’s sustained empathic immersion in the inner life of patients (especially their transference experiences). In this context he viewed free association and defense analysis as auxiliary methods that made introspection and empathy more reliably available as tools of scientific data-gathering. Later on he also placed introspection and empathy in a central position in the interpretive process as the only avenue of “direct” access to the inner life of another. In Kohut’s definition, then, empathy as vicarious introspection became the way in which one could feel oneself and think oneself into the inner life of another. Once we take up the empathic observational position we are led into the domain of clinical psychoanalysis: the patient’s subjective experiences, those that are immediately available to awareness as well as those that become available as the analytic work progresses. Special note ought to be made of the fact that these subjective experiences naturally include the way the patient feels about the analyst; that is, these experiences inevitably include the patient’s transferences.
The Selfobject Transferences. What distinguishes Kohut’s contributions to psychoanalysis is the fact that he discovered new transference configurations, and these served as the basis for all his other discoveries and theoretical formulations; they are thus clinically based and experience-near. It is in his observation and conception of the selfobject transferences that we can most clearly see the linkage between method, findings, and theory. It follows from the method of empathic observation that the analyst will immediately be sensitive to several clusters of the patient’s needs, which, under favorable circumstances in the analytic situation, coalesce into one or another of the cohesive, sustained, selfobject transferences. One cluster contains the need for echoing, approval, validation, affirmation, and admiration: the craving for the presence of the gleam in the mother-analyst’s eyes, which Kohut subsumed under the broad umbrella of “mirroring”—the mirror transference. Another cluster contains the need to have an idealizable analyst, in order to partake of his or her power, wisdom, omnipotence, and omniscience so as to acquire internalized values and ideals and the capacity for self soothing and self calming—the idealizing transference. Still another cluster involves the need for attachment to someone like oneself, an alter-ego or a twin, to feel a part of like-minded others, often peers, so as to allow one’s innate skills and talents to unfold—the alter-ego or twinship transference.
In these transferences thwarted archaic needs are remobilized, nonjudgmentally accepted, understood, and explained, with the aim of achieving belated maturation and structure building: the acquisition of capacities thwarted by traumatic experiences in infancy and childhood.
The Concept of the Selfobject. It is from the observation and working through of the selfobject transferences that Kohut formulated his foundational construct, the developmental, clinical, and theoretical conception of the selfobject. What is a selfobject (or a “selfobject experience,” as is nowadays preferred)? The term refers to certain specific functions provided by an other who is experienced as part of the self. During infancy and childhood such functions by caretakers are crucial to the attainment of a cohesive, well structured self. In an empathic climate of infancy or childhood the functions of the selfobjects will become transmutedly internalized into abiding psychic structures. Transmuting internalization (Kohut’s term for the process of structure building in infancy and childhood as well as during psychoanalytic treatment) is the process in which, under felicitous circumstances, the archaic precursors of psychic functions in the self-selfobject matrix mature and become readily available later in life. Faulty or missing selfobject functions will be experienced as traumatic during infancy and childhood, leading to a derailed, arrested, or deficient development of the self.
It should now be evident that in self psychology the primacy of the drives has been replaced by the primacy of the selfobject functions or selfobject experiences. This is a drastic change for conceiving personality development in health and illness. And combined with the method of empathic immersion in the subjective experiences of the patient, this change amounts to a new psychoanalytic paradigm.
And now to the clinical vignette, which shows the impact of these methodological and theoretical changes on the conduct and process of analysis.
A 25-year-old single industrial engineer came to analysis because he was unable to perform adequately on his new job; he was too preoccupied with himself and had no direction in his life. On the job he could not read or sit still long enough to finish any of his projects, and at home he could not do any work when alone. Only if one of his many girlfriends sat with him in the same room could he read a bit or do some work for brief periods. To exemplify his extreme restlessness and lack of enduring relationships, he related immediately that he had to move from one woman to the next almost nightly, obtaining no pleasure from any of these (often somewhat bizarre) sexual exploits. He added that these served the purpose of draining him of his tensions, and that the women were a better outlet than masturbation. It soon emerged that when he was bored he immediately had to search for some exciting, self-stimulating experience, and when he was overstimulated and could not calm down spontaneously he had to search for some calming experience: masturbation, sex, hot showers, cold showers, or running around the block, which served more or less either purpose.
During the initial phase of the analysis the patient continued to enact his various methods of self stimulation and self calming with undiminished intensity and frequency. At the same time he latched on to the analyst and the analysis with an addiction-like intensity and felt that being able to talk unhindered, with the analyst’s attention fastened exclusively on him, made these sessions a tremendously helpful “outlet.” He inundated the analyst with the most minute details of his daily activities, especially his sexual exploits, and expected to elicit the analyst’s admiration for the “Don Juan” in him. But instead of responding to the content of these communications, the analyst remarked (in a Monday session) that the patient had seemed more frantic than usual during the preceding weekend; it sounded as though he had had to engage in a variety of sadistic exploits under some pressure, even though he did not want to do this, in order to manage his tension and restlessness. The analyst’s aim was to recognize with the patient his states of over- or understimulation, along with his habitual modes of coping with them. This led to an interesting response on the patient’s part, which heralded the developing idealizing transference. He was much calmer the next day and expressed the hope that he might be able just to stay home, put his feet up on a chair, and read. He then added: “You commented yesterday that perhaps I had been so keyed up for so long that I found it hard to slow down and relax. I must say, of all the comments anybody ever made to me yet, all have been what I have thought of myself, too, before, but this was different.” He kept thinking about it and wondered whether he could give up these frantic activities, but he decided that he could not do so yet.
The patient, although at first disappointed that he could not be analyzed by the city’s most prominent psychoanalyst, now began to feel not only that he was well understood, but that his analyst understood him in a unique way. The development of the idealizing transference was underway, which reduced the frequency and intensity of the patient’s enactments. These were well contained as long as the analyst responded adequately and understood the patient’s various communications. After the consolidation of the idealizing transference only its unempathic disruption resulted in the renewed outbreak of the patient’s sadistic enactments. It was then possible to trace those intra-analytic experiences that had originally led to the disruption of the transference and to understand the dynamic (and also the genetic) reasons for the patient’s repeated fragmentations. Such reconstructions would usually re-establish the continuity and cohesiveness of the transference until the next inevitable disruption.
I shall now illustrate the depth and intensity of the idealizing transference, its disruptions, and the working-through process it usually permitted. Along with this patient’s idealization of the analyst, his own helplessness, powerlessness, and feelings of insignificance moved into the analytic experience. Once he asked thoughtfully, with some despair in his voice: “Why do I have to have you acknowledge that I feel good before I know I feel good?” His own further reflections were of considerable significance:
[He felt that he was] a splat on the wall—when you throw hot rubber against the wall, it hardens and is like an octopus with suckers on it, clinging to the wall. Then nothing matters, only the clinging like a splat. It can’t tolerate the rumbling of the wall. Any disconnection is a threat to the survival of the splat. That’s how I am with T. [his girlfriend] and with you. I want you to be the wall—shut up and listen! If I would no longer have to be a splat on the wall, it would be a major accomplishment.
He could feel strong, powerful, and important only in his attachment to the idealized analyst. Whatever disrupted this attachment—weekend separations, vacations, or even slight unempathic rebuffs—all felt like the “rumbling of the wall,” endangering “the splat.”
The analysis of the disruptions of this idealizing attachment invariably brought back some relevant early memories. Disappointments in the idealized analyst led to renewed increase in masturbation and a preoccupation with what he called a “fetishistic drive to look at girls’ legs that doesn’t listen to reason. It’s a hateful, mean, needful pursuit of women. I am chasing them because I feel unloved; I withdraw into myself; I masturbate because I am unloved, turning to myself as if I were my own mother.”
The analyst’s absences for scientific meetings, for example, and the emotional withdrawal that may have been occasioned by the advance preparation for them, provoked rage and revengeful death wishes—and then led to considerable insight. “I seem to care about you only as you affect me—because my life is dependent upon you. I need you without a blemish [i.e., as a better mother and father than he had had], but it’s such selfish stuff not to give a damn about you.”
Disruptions of the transference were now experienced as “big rips” or “big cracks in the wall,” endangering the “splat.” But the analytic “repair” of the rips and cracks in the wall slowly transformed the splat from “an octopus with suckers on it” to one with “legs and feet, with a chance for separate existence.” The transformation was slow, with frequent regressions.
The details of the working-through process cannot be illustrated further in this brief presentation. It should only be added that this process ultimately led to a lessening of the analyst’s importance as an idealized parent imago and a concomitant acquisition by the patient of an increasing capacity for self soothing and self calming via transmuting internalizations: the bit-by-bit acquisition of new capacities. The resulting greater ability to regulate inner tension was at first more apparent outside of the analytic situation. In the analysis, a further pathognomonic regression revived the grandiose-exhibitionistic self in the mirror transference. It was this secondary mirror transference, then, that carried the analysis to its resolution and termination.
A dream will illustrate this shift to the mirror transference, in which the grandiose-exhibitionistic self demanded admiration and affirmation:
I was fishing in this pond or lake. There were lots of fish. I could see them. Cast the jitterbug and was bringing them in. Maybe my Dad was there; I don’t know. Decided to go after something better, caught a big turtle. Got scared and ran ashore.
His associations included many memories of fishing trips when he would have wanted his father to be there, to witness and to admire his prowess. He realized that the anxiety in the dream related to his current wish that the analyst admire him and praise him.
For most of the early phases of this mirror transference the patient experienced the analytic situation as a “stage” and his own intra-analytic “performance” as a “floor show,” in which he had to have the center of the stage and the approving-admiring “clapping” of the analyst. Highly sensitive to the analyst’s responses and to their absence, he was easily overstimulated and often felt intruded upon by the analyst’s interventions. He finally said that he wished he could lie down in a room full of cotton, where he would be protected against overstimulation and its consequences of falling apart. The occasions for overstimulation became increasingly more manageable, and transient fragmentations, though still numerous, were of shorter duration, until finally they occurred only in dreams. It was around these experiences that the analytic work in this sector of the personality took place during the termination phase, consolidating the patient’s ability to regulate his inner tension and the severe fluctuations of his self-esteem. A dream during the last week of the analysis illustrates an important aspect of what the patient has accomplished. This was “a great dream of success,” he said:
T. and I were out fishing and I saw a muskellunge. It came right up, took my bait, and I said to T., “You got to net this fish; you got to bring your line in, shut the motor, and bring your net in.” She didn’t listen. Some guy on the shore was yelling, ‘Take a picture of it; hey, do this, hey do that!” In exasperation I reached over with one hand, got the net, and I got him—that’s easy! Big fish. I was tickled to death; in my family that is a great thing. We went ashore, walked along a promenade lit up with bright colored lights at night, and we’ve got the muskie with us.
The work on this dream led us to what the patient called his “final landing.” He was pleased with his dream and said that if he had not been able to catch a fish like that in the past, the next best thing was to dream about it. He felt lucky and wondered whether he was trying to fulfill his father’s expectation of him in the dream, or the analyst’s, or his own? Did he still want to show off the giant catch to the analyst-father for approval and admiration, the approval and admiration he never had from his father? He thought the analyst was ashore, yelling to him what to do but he said to himself, “Quit listening to him and net your own fish.”
The preceding vignette illustrates various facets of the patient’s self disorder as well as the sequential mobilization at first of the idealizing transference and then of the mirror transference. The most pervasive aspect of the disorder was the patient’s profound inability to regulate inner tension and the many sexualized efforts to cope with it, all of which had an “addiction-like” quality and were compulsively pursued. It would have been easy for the analyst to be seduced by the content of the patient’s free associations and attempt to analyze them. Instead, he focused on the patient’s subjective experiences and repeatedly offered his tentative understanding of what the patient’s various enactments were designed to accomplish regarding his tension regulation. These efforts paid off; the patient felt understood and the development of an idealizing transference was visibly in the offing. The patient’s own imagery conveyed the depth and intensity of his idealizations. It was important to accept them rather than interpret them as defenses against some underlying hidden hostility. It was necessary and helpful to focus on moments of disruption, to explain why they were experienced as so painful and how the patient was attempting to cope with them. Here again it was not the pursuit of the psychic content of the state of fragmentation that furthered the analytic process, but reconstructing what happened—what had led to the momentary fragmentation—and showing the patient the function of his sexualizations and rages that emerged as a consequence of the disruption of the idealizing transference.
The clinical vignette further illustrates the shift in the nature of the transference, in the emergence of archaic grandiosity and a wish to show off, first in a dream and then more pervasively in the patient’s intra-analytic enactments and free associations. The mirror transference established itself and became the target of the working-through process. Here too interventions had to be directed toward explaining the disruptions and their consequences, which invariably brought back some significant memories and expanded the analytic process in depth and in breadth.
Kohut, H. (1959). Introspection, empathy and psychoanalysis: an examination of the relation between mode of observation and theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 7:459–483.
——— (1971). The Analysis of the Self. New York: International Universities Press.
——— (1977). The Restoration of the Self. New York: International Universities Press.
——— (1984). How Does Analysis Cure? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ornstein, P. H. (1978). The working through of a mirror transference. In The Psychology of the Self: A Case Book, ed. A. Goldberg, pp. 124–157. New York: International Universities Press.
——— (1982). On the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of primary self pathology. In Annual Review of Psychiatry, ed. L. Greenspoon, pp. 498–510. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
1. This highly condensed vignette was first published in Ornstein 1982, and a more comprehensive presentation of the analysis as a whole was published in Ornstein 1978.