Self-Psychology and Feminism: An Integration and Expansion

In 1959, Heinz Kohut, already a highly renowned psychoanalyst, wrote an article entitled “Introspection, Empathy, and Psychoanalysis” that raised issues that would result in significant controversy within the psychoanalytic community. Though not yet laying out clearly the basic tenets of what would come to be called self-psychology, in this article Kohut began to explore some of the very basic processes that were to become central to his theory. Specifically, he addressed narcissism and object love within human development, and empathy within the therapeutic relationship.

During the time Kohut began to formulate the theory and practice of self-psychology, another revolutionary movement once again gained momentum among the women of the United States and many other countries. Women such as Betty Friedan (1963), Germaine Greer (1970), and Kate Millett (1970) began writing for and about women, and their writings ushered in a new era of American history. Strong shifts in the social structure were to take place in the following decades, marked by a fresh look at values considered stereotypically feminine, or within the realm of women. Specifically, human relatedness and within it empathy, warmth, affection, and nurturance, was moved into the foreground as an important, positive, and growth-promoting characteristic of human behavior and striving.

The theoretical ideas of both the women's movement and Kohut demonstrated a move toward analytic humanism that took place despite (or perhaps because of) the decade of the “me” generation, or culture of narcissism , in the United States. The new value systems proposed by feminists and self-psychologists are perhaps best described as a search for a better society that can provide for basic human needs, such as nurturance and security. These two concepts, nurturance and security, are intimately related to Kohut's formulations of two essential interpersonal processes and self-structures, namely, mirroring and idealization.