By Any Other Name?

“[T]hat which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.”

(Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.47–48)

Would Kohut want to change the name of Self Psychology if he were alive today? When Kohut gave the name of Self Psychology to his new psychoanalytic theory, he was trying to solve problems that he saw in Classical Psychoanalysis at that time. In his view, these problems related primarily to the mechanistic and impersonal aspects of Freud's drive and structural theories. Conceptualizing a theory to explain the development of an experiential “sense of self” or selfhood in the context of and through the relationships with primary caregivers, he may have felt that he had adequately addressed his difficulties with the theories that preceded him and labeled the new theory appropriately.

Foremost in his theory of self-development was his concept of the self–selfobject relationship, in which self and other formed an indivisible unit and were mutually constituted through their interactions as well as constantly revised because of their shared and permeable boundaries. The name “Self Psychology” beautifully reflects one half of this indivisible unit

but gives no hint of the other (or selfobject) that is just as essential to Kohut's central ideas.

Many of today's Self Psychologists feel that the name Kohut chose for his theory should be preserved, in spite of the fact that it reflects only part of his complex and multifaceted understanding of human development and experience, while others suggest that Self Psychology is not well-served under Kohut's chosen label, due to the many misunderstandings of his ideas that have been generated by the theory's name.

Those who want to keep the name—which, after all, was given to the theory by its founder—are understandably interested in preserving continuity-of-identity by Self Psychologis