Kohut Today1

In his introductory remarks David Terman recalled his early years at the Chicago Institute: Heinz Kohut's masterful seminar on psychoanalytic theory , his 1966 presidential address, ‘Forms and Transformations of Nacissism’, then his new seminar laying out new ideas culminating in The Analysis of the Self . One felt they were hearing the most important psychoanalytic ideas since publication of The Ego and the Id. The essence of these ‘new phenomena’ is the selfobject… the centrality of the ‘other’ as an intrinsic part of Self…and the systematic understanding of the crucial role interactions play in the development of structure. The analyst participates in the revival, repair and growth of that structure. In today's panel, a common thread in all three presentations is the nature, meaning, and importance of the analyst's responses at critical moments in the analysis. Normal development requires the participation of the caregiver, now the analyst, to gain access to affects central to an emerging self within a developmental context being re-lived in the analytic relationship.

Paul Ornstein then presented a paper, Heinz Kohut: Then and now: The essence of his contributions to psychoanalysis. When Kohut began working on a new paradigm in psychoanalysis, many analysts felt that the leading theory, ego psychology, had become too abstract and distant. In On narcissism: An introduction, Freud had stated that he was leaving to one side the themes of “[t]he disturbances to which the child's original narcissism is exposed, the reactions with which he seeks to protect himself from them and the paths into which he is forced in doing so” (1914); Freud had alluded to these themes as “an important field of work which still awaits exploration”, and this was the field of exploration of Kohut.

Freud's ego psychology aims at elucidating the nature of the patient's psychopathology and underlying conflict, essentially showing the patient how his mind works, and transference analysis demonstra