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ALTHOUGH RECENT PSYCHOANALYTIC contributions on the topic of narcissism (Kohut, 1966), (1968), (1971), (1972); (Kernberg, 1970), (1974a), (1974b), (in press) have aroused a great deal of general interest (cf. Loewald, 1973); (Morgenthaler, 1973); (Ornstein, 1974), (1975); (Panel, 1973), perhaps no aspect of these reassessments of traditional theories (e.g. Freud, 1914); (Reich, 1960); (Greenacre, 1966) has given rise to more controversy than Kohut's point of view on the phenomenon of idealization as it occurs within the analytic transference (Kohut, 1971, esp. pp. 37-101 and 260-269). Briefly, Kohut has proposed that, in patients with psychological problems centered on the insufficient consolidation of the self (problems he has designated as the "narcissistic personality disturbances"), the classical psychoanalytic technique will lead to the emergence of one or both of a pair of "narcissistic transferences": the reliving of the subject-centered grandiosity of early childhood and/or of the small child's belief in the perfection of his parental figures.
The reluctance to accept Kohut's viewpont about idealization may be ascribed to its originality: in contrast, the "mirror transferences," i.e., those which reveal the archaic