Some Thoughts on Psychoanalytic Change—A Self Psychological View

ANALYSTS HAVE BEEN TRYING to define the curative factors in psychoanalysis for almost as long as psychoanalysis has been with us. Altho concensus remains elusive, one thing at least that has become clear is the extent to which models of psychopathology inform models of cure. Even in the clinical thought of one single analyst, Freud himself, five separate theories of cure were necessary to account for the five different models that he embraced over his long and searching career (Frances, 1987). Further, there are those who maintain that the idea of cure, implying as it does illness, is in itself a distortion of the analytic process as they view it. Personal growth, self realization, increased psychological comfort in the conduct of one's life appear to them the more relevant concepts. In any case, as psychoanalysis broadens and shifts its boundaries, incorporating parts of new theories and discarding bits of old ones, the influence of theory on ideas about psychological change becomes an important factor as analysts search for a more universal vocabulary with which to communicate. In this paper I would like to use the framework of self psychology to indicate how ideas about theory can influence ideas about change and to look towards a common vantage point underlying the diversity that might make it easier for analysts of varying persuasions to compare their ideas with each other.

Self psychology, with its roots in the study of pathological narcissism, has, perhaps of necessity, a controversial view of successful outcome, one which has caused critics to raise the question of whether what self psychologists do is psychoanalysis at all. Kohut finds error in the value-laden goals of classical analysis saying, "Although