Kohut’s Self Psychology

Self Psychology: The Newest Development in Classical Psychoanalysis

Self psychology: theory that the self is the center of psychological motivation, organization, and change in personality

• Assumes that psychological damage to the self produces psychopathology

Self Psychology as Object-Relations Theory

Objects-relations theory: the course of human development depends on the quality of the relationships established between individuals, particularly between parents and their children

• Object relations: mental representations of real external people that exist within the individual or self
• Self-objects: representations of psychologically important people who can help us cope with and resolve problems

Pre-Oedipal Development of the Nuclear Self

• Nuclear self: foundation of personality, established through a learning process initiated by empathic parents, in which individuals modify their unrealistic beliefs about themselves and their caretakers
• Primary narcissism: initial state of well-being and satisfaction in which all of the infant’s needs are gratified and the infant feels an oceanic perfection and bliss
• Grandiose self: primitive view of oneself as great
• Mirroring: process whereby a person sees himself or herself in the face of the other (usually the mother)
  • Child can internalize others’ approval and admiration
  • Facilitated by empathy: ability to assume the perspective of another person; to know and understand his or her experiences

• Optimal frustrations: ideal, nontraumatic, frustration of a person’s needs (by parents) that fosters new learning and personal growth
• Transmuting internalizations: process whereby individuals learn more realistic and effective ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving as a consequence of interactions with empathic parents
• Idealized parental imago: children’s initial view of their parents as perfect, all-knowing, and all-powerful
• Need to idealize: need to seek security by identifying with all-powerful figures, usually parents
• Cohesive self: personality that is organized and healthy, and functions effectively, because its narcissistic energies are primarily invested in the pursuit of realistic goals

Disturbances to the Self

Borderline states: disorders of the self in which damage to the self is permanent or protracted; in contrast to the psychoses, the central defect is better covered by major defenses

• Schizoid personality disorders: defective self structures are protected against further damage by aloofness and superficial involvement in relationships
• Paranoid personality disorders: deficiencies in self structures are shielded against further damage by using hostility and suspicion to keep potentially injurious objects at a safe distance

• Psychosis: severe disturbance of the self in which defenses do not cover major defects in the self

Narcissistic personality disorders

• Understimulated self: individuals feel empty, bored, and depressed because their parents have failed to respond empathically to their mirroring and idealizing needs
• Fragmenting self: person feels uncoordinated, in some cases, the person may feel tired, mentally slow, and awkward following threatening experiences
• Overstimulated self: individuals exposed to excessive stimulation in childhood, because their fantasies of greatness were continually reinforced by unempathic caregivers
• Overburdened self: person has not had an opportunity to merge with the calmness of an omnipotent self-object, usually a parent
  • Result is lack of the self-soothing capacity that could have been learned through such contact
• Mirror-hungry personalities: individuals who crave self-objects whose confirming and admiring responses will increase their feelings of self-worth
• Ideal-hungry personalities: individuals who experience themselves as worthwhile as long as they can relate to people they can admire
• Alter-ego personalities: individuals who feel worthwhile only if they have a relationship with a self-object who looks and dresses like them and has  similar opinions and values
• Merger-hungry personalities: individuals who experience others as their own self
• Contact-shunning personalities: intense longing to merge with self-objects; such individuals are highly sensitive to rejection, to avoid this pain, they avoid social contact

The Role of Narcissism in the Development of the Self

• Unhealthy narcissism: unrealistic feelings of grandeur, exhibitionism, poor impulse control, and impoverished relationships with their parents
• Healthy narcissism: person sheds excessive parental dependencies, starts to exercise autonomy, develops skills, and becomes a creative, empathic, and achievement-oriented person within a context of enduring interpersonal commitments
• Autonomous self: self of an individual who has achieved optimal mental health and a freedom from inhibitions that interfere with his or her ability to act productively

Assessment Techniques

• Dream analysis
• Free association
• Empathy as the primary data collection toll
• Transference
  • –Counter-transference: therapist tends to react to the patient on the basis of his or her own narcissistic needs and conflicts
  • –Mirror transference: a person who had not been adequately mirrored, that is, confirmed and given approval by his mother, relives these experiences with the therapist
  • –Idealizing transference: a patient see the therapist as an admirable and powerful figure to fulfill their unmet childhood needs of  comforting, protective parents
  • –Alter-ego transference: a patient seeks for the therapist to fulfill their unmet childhood needs of comfort and acceptance from their own parents

Theory’s Implications for Therapy

• Goal of therapy is to redirect narcissistic energies from the unrealistic self structures to the nuclear self and its ego
• Patients who have undergone therapy will not undergo miraculous changes
  • Instead, when therapy is successful, individuals will show considerable improvement in various areas of their lives
• On the whole, good analysis means that patients are able to experience the joy of existence more keenly and consider their life more worthwhile

Evaluative Comments

• Comprehensiveness: broad scope
• Precision and testability: not very precise and very difficult to test adequately
• Parsimony: too reductionistic
• Empirical validity: so far, not much empirical support for much of the theory, with the exception of theorizing about unhealthy narcissism
• Heuristic value: highly heuristic, at least in stimulating professionals in psychoanalysis to reconsider many of the concepts they hitherto had adopted uncritically
• Applied value: has high-applied value in generating profitable research on narcissism

References
Bernstein, D.A. & Nash, P.W. (2008). Essentials of psychology (4th ed.) Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Feldman, R. (2013). Essentials of understanding psychology (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Friedman, H.S. & Schustack, M.W. (2012), Personality: classic theories and modern research (5th ed). Boston: Pearson Allyn & Bacon.
Ryckman, R. M. (2013). Theories of personality (10th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.