Heinz Kohut introduced self psychology in the 1970s, establishing it as one of the most significant psychoanalytic theories since Freud. Kohut questioned the theories he was trained in after encountering patients whose analyses were stalling or ending prematurely. He developed his theory of the self by closely observing patient Ms. F, who demanded he perfectly attune to her experiences. Kohut learned to understand things exclusively from her viewpoint, which he termed "experience-near." This approach led Kohut to understand Ms. F.'s need for recognition as a developmental arrest due to empathic failures in childhood. Kohut maintained that empathic failures between parents and children were at the root of psychopathology and that empathy itself could

1. SELF-PSYCHOLOGY
Heinz Kohut in the early 70's with the
publication of his now famous monograph, The
Analysis of the Self (1971)
Self psychology has burgeoned into one of the
most significant analytic theories since Freud
first introduced psychoanalysis

2. Having been trained in the theories of
American ego psychology, Kohut established
a reputation as a staunchly conservative
Freudian analyst, winning him in 1964 the
presidency of the American Psychoanalytic
Association.

3. his deep concern for the many stalemated or
premature terminations among his patient
population, that eventually prompted him
to question the very theories upon which he
had staked his scientific surety and built his
reputation.

4. Setting aside his classical theory, Kohut took
the lead from his patients in discovering his
theory of the self. In particular, it was the
case of Ms. F., a woman in her mid-20's, who
insisted that he be perfectly attuned to her
every word.

5. whenever Kohut strayed from Ms. F.'s
experience by offering an intervention that
reflected even a slight revision to what she
had arrived at on her own, she became
enraged that he was ruining what she had
accomplished and "wrecking" her analysis.

6. By relinquishing his clinical assumption that
her anger was an expression of her resistance
to the analysis, which he recognized was
impeding his ability to grasp the fullness of
Ms. F.'s experience, Kohut learned to see and
understand things exclusively from her
viewpoint.
He termed this mode of
observation, “experience-near” based on
complete empathy for her inner emotional
experiences

7. in these moments when he captured her
feeling of being misunderstood and offered
a response that more or less reflected what
she was thinking and feeling, he observed
that her previous sense of well-being was
quicklyquickly restored.

8. In time Kohut hypothesized that this
sequence of disruption and reparation of the
empathic connectedness between analyst
and analysand is an inevitability in any
effective treatment; at the same time, he
suggested that if these disruptions of
empathy are kept to an "optimal" (vs.
"traumatic") level, they are not harmful
but, in fact, are an essential ingredient in the
development of psychic structure and
analytic cure.

9. from an experience-near empathic
perspective led to Kohut's understanding of
Ms. F.'s need for recognition, a need he
viewed as a "developmental arrest" due to
empathic failures of childhood and that he
later theorized to be a mirror selfobject
transference.

10. Though self psychology also recognizes
certain drives, conflicts and complexes
present in Freudian psychodynamic
theory, these are understood within a
different framework.

11. Kohut maintained that parents' failures to
empathize with their children and the
responses of their children to these failures
were 'at the root of almost all
psychopathology.' [9] For Kohut, the loss of
the other and the other's selfobject function
(see below) leaves the individual
apathetic, lethargic, empty of the feeling of
life, without vitality, in short, depressed. [10]
For the infant to move from grandiose to
cohesive self and beyond, meant a slow
process of disillusionment with phantasies
of omnipotence, mediated by the parents:
'This process of gradual and titrated
disenchantment requires that the infant's
caretakers be empathetically attuned to the
infant's needs'

12. Kohut 'highlights empathy as the tool par
excellence, which allows the creation of a
relationship between patient and analyst
that can offer some hope of mitigating early
self pathology.

13. For Kohut, the implicit bond of empathy
itself has a curative effect

14. 'Kohut argued that normal human infants
are born with a nuclear self already in place
(a biologically determined psychological
entity).'[5] That self then encountered what
he called 'the virtual self (an image of the
newborn's self, which resides in the minds of
the infant's parents).'[6] In optimal
circumstances, the interaction of nuclear
and virtual selves would 'lead to the child's
gradual organization of a cohesive self'[6] to the point where ideally 'a living self in
depth has become the organizing center of
the ego's activities.'[7] Along the way,
however, would be the appearance of 'the
grandiose self...the self that emerges out of
the normal infantile experience of oneself as
the centre of all experience, omnipotent'

15. Selfobjects are external objects that function
as part of the "self machinery" - 'i.e., objects
which are not experienced as separate and
independent from the self

16. 'Kohut describes early interactions between
the infant and his caretakers as involving the
infant's "self" and the infant's "selfobjects"'.[

17. Selfobjects are addressed throughout
Kohut's theory, and include everything from
the transference phenomenon in
therapy, relatives, and items (for instance
Linus van Pelt's security blanket): they 'thus
cover the phenomena which were described
by Winnicott[14] as transitional objects

18. the most important aspect of the earliest
mother-infant relationship is the principle
of optimal frustration. Tolerable
disappointments...lead to the establishment
of internal structures which provide the
basis for self-soothing

19. In a parallel way, Kohut considered that the
'skilful analyst will...conduct the analysis
according to the principle of optimal
frustration

20. idealized selfobjects "provide the experience
of merger with the calm, power, wisdom,
and goodness of idealized persons

21. Kohut simply seems to blame parental
deficit for all childhood
difficulties, disregarding the inherent
conflicts of the drives: 'Where the orthodox
Freudian sees sex everywhere, the Kohutian
sees unempathic mothers everywhere - even
in sex

22. Drive psychology, ego psychology, object
relations psychology and self psychology
each have important insights to offer
twenty-first-century clinicians