The Bonds of Empathy: Beyond the Selfobject Concept

In Kohut’s last paper he used Odysseus as his icon of mental health due to Odysseus’ refusal to kill his son to avoid conscription. It is argued that Odysseus’ decision cannot be accounted for within the framework of a selfobject conceptualization. By using Odysseus’ decision as a signature indicator of the healthy self, Kohut went beyond the selfobject in defining mental health, albeit without an explicit acknowledgement of so doing. The thesis of this paper is that Odysseus was empathic with his son, and such empathy is inextricably linked to the development of self. Empathy being a goal of a self psychological analysis, it follows that there is a gap between such an aim and the use of the concept of the selfobject as the crux of therapeutic action. If transferences are limited to their selfobject forms, conceptual tools are lacking for the development of empathy because selfobjects are not experienced as subjects of experience. Because capacity for empathy requires making contact with the analyst’s subjectivity, analysis must go beyond the selfobject transferences to achieve the goal of developing the capacity for empathy. The clinical implications of this view are drawn out and illustrated with the analysis of a depressed man.