Response to Steven Knoblauch

I want to thank Steven Knoblauch for his thoughtful response to my article. Steven’s discussion opens what I consider to be a crucial discourse not only in self psychology, but also in contemporary psychoanalysis in general. In my view, the evolution of self psychology has resulted in two separate but intertwining themes: The value and limits of the concept of the selfobject and the relationship between conceptualization and the concrete experience of psychoanalysis. Although I only explicitly addressed the former in my article, Steven adroitly noted that I am implicitly raising the question of how one uses theory in psychoanalysis without “draining psychoanalytic work of its vital character.” These are both important questions, but they should not be conflated. The purpose of the article is to consider the development of empathy in the analytic process and to assess whether limiting the transference to any of the varieties of “selfobject” experience can result in the ability to be empathic. Included in that concern is the issue Steven raised as to what type of concept is most appropriate for psychoanalysis.

Steven and I are in agreement that any notion of the analyst as function is to wiped off the analytic slate. However, for me that is only the start. Of course I agree with Steven that we should be careful to use concepts that retain the life blood of the emotional sturm und drang that we call psychoanalysis. And that was a leitmotif in my article. But, I want to say more than that. The deeper issue is whether seeing the transference solely through the lens of the selfobject conceptualization limits the analytic aim of developing empathy. Because the selfobject is never a person with her own experience, the patient does not make contact with the analyst’s mind and, therefore, the move to empathy is problematic. So, I am concerned not only with avoiding rarefied conceptualizations that Kohut termed “experience distant,” but also, and more importantly in this articl