An Unacknowledged Schism

At a recent American Psychoanalytic Association national meeting, a presenter on a panel about the impact of American culture on psychoanalysis declared that Kohut was the first truly American psychoanalyst. What was surprising about this appraisal was not the complementary status being attributed to Kohut, but the fact that his name was even mentioned on a major panel. As an active member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, as well as a member of the International Council for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, I have to report that, unfortunately, Kohut and self psychology are seldom, if ever, a presence on the programs of the APsaA meetings.

Although it was difficult to discern from the presentation why this panelist chose to so characterize Kohut, despite his European background, it did, on reflection, appear to me as true because there is something distinctly American in the bold and incisive way that Kohut utilized his clinical experience, both personally and with patients, to conclude that classical analysis had lead analysts away from therapeutic effectiveness. Ultimately, he was forced to conclude that typical classical interpretations made to patients who were narcissistically vulnerable only served to re-traumatize them; they were experienced by the patient as blaming them

for their own suffering because it was the intentionality of their own drives, sequestered in their unconscious, that left them wanting what they could not and should not have, angry about being deprived, and frightened at the idea of retaliation from their own superegos.

Self-psychology, in my experience, does indeed offer a far more therapeutically effective approach to analytic work than any of the classically based theoretical approaches. By including the analyst's empathic immersion in the patient's experience, it liberates analysts from a