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The self has always stirred controversy among psychoanalysts. How do we integrate descriptions of immediate, subjective experiences of self with descriptions of more abstract aspects of agency and motivation? In traditional ego psychology, for example, “the primary motivators are the drives, with the ego consisting of a set of functions used in managing the drives and mediating between the drives and the outside world. The self is conceptualized as a representation, or set of contents within the structure of the ego. In contrast, … self psychologists argue that the self is a structure with its own driving force or motivations that are primary and irreducible” (Auchincloss and Samberg 2012, p. 232). In Mutuality, Recognition, and the Self, Christine Kieffer presents a view of self development from the standpoint of self psychology integrated with both intersubjective and relational perspectives.
In a prologue she elaborates several features of this view. First, it is based on a two-person model of the mind, a paradigm change that understands clinical phenomena such as transference and projective identification as co-constructed by analyst and patient. For Kieffer, following Aron, psychic structure formation in analysis is based not only on the stable characteristics of analyst and patient taken separately (a one-person psychology) but also on properties that emerge from the interaction between them (a two-person psychology). “Mutual recognition develops as two people meet and engage with one another—within a context of bi-directional influence. However, mutual recognition, in which there is an awareness and acceptance of the other's autonomy, is … often a developmental achievement. Thus, therapeutic action is aimed at helping the patient to develop a cohesive state that permits a sense of one's subjectivity while recognising the subjectivity of the other” (p. xxii). She also cites Ogden as illustrating a two-person psychology in his concept