Psychoanalytic Self-Psychology

In the 1960’s Heinz Kohut (1913, Vienna--1981, Chicago) established, as the continuation of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, the psychology of the self. Its central interest is the human self, developed from its origins in the exchange with those to whom the child is most closely related. The present self-states, together with the developmental history of the self, both appearing in the intersubjective field of the relationship, form the main focus of psychoanalytic work.

Psychic conflict, the center of classical psychoanalytic theory and treatment, is understood and treated in self psychology. Its developmental basis is in the relational modes of early childhood, where the building of self has included both possibilities and disturbances. Thus self psychology is system-oriented and holistic in its thinking. Contemporary infant research gives self psychology an empirical foundation.

"Psychoanalytic self psychology" is a psychoanalysis that takes the scientific progress since Freud into account and includes it in its theory and practice. Unlike "classical psychoanalysis" with its mechanistic and individualistic drive theory, which sees the patient as an object and claims to observe objectively, self psychology views the human being from the very beginning in infancy as "in relation" and not as individual.

We therefore foreground the complex contexts in which people live, especially as these are portrayed in the analyst-patient relationship. Both participants bring their subjective histories of development within relationships into the therapeutic relationship. The analytic task is to illuminate and reorganize interpretively both the relational patterns and added understandings as these appear in the analytic relationship.

This implies a clear refusal to understand and conduct analysis in an authoritarian spirit and manner, and requires the continual self-reflection of the analyst on his or her own contribution to the psychoanalytic relationship.

Self psychology, founded by Heinz Kohut (1913, Vienna-1981, Chicago) in the nineteensixties and seventies in the USA and further developed by his colleagues and kindred spirits, has provided the decisive step toward this attitude and this work. The central concept in self psychology is the selfobject transference. "Selfobject" means the persistent inner sense that a person or thing provides a needed function for the building up, the maintenance, and the development of self-experience. It designates both the inner expectation (representation) as well as the experience that the expectation is fulfilled (i.e. the selfobject need is met).

The method of sustained "empathy", together with the attempt at "optimal responsiveness", offers the greatest assurance that the patient’s dread to repeat earlier traumatic experience will be understood and met in accordance with this understanding. The subjective experience of both participants in the analytic dialogue is thus always in the foreground.