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This original and multilayered paper sets out to do many things and I think it does each of them well. The author draws parallels between parental authoritarianism in families and fascism in the political realm, seeing both phenomena as emanating from the pathological narcissism of a parent or leader. The paper’s focus is thus on the creative rebellion (or the battle cry) required of the children of such parents to emerge from the shadow of their parents’ narcissism for instance as exemplified by Kohut in relation to his controlling mother; or on the rebellion required by members of educational and professional organizations who are feeling constrained by outdated ideas and standards of behavior as Kohut and other innovators did in relation to Freudian drive theory. The author also points to the rebellion required of citizens whose nations are pushed dangerously close to fascism by their pathologically narcissistic leaders (as is currently the case in the US).
More specifically Kaufmann uses Kohut’s The Two Analyses of Mr. Z—in which Kohut charts his own emergence from the shadow of his mother’s paranoid control—as a way to approach his clinical work with a patient of his own, named Susan, who is up against maternal control not unlike what Kohut experienced in his personal life. Through Kaufmann’s work with Susan (as inspired by Kohut’s “Mr. Z”), Susan was ultimately able to throw off the oppression of her own pathologically narcissistic parent.
The paper draws additional parallels between Kohut’s rebellion against Freudian drive theory—a rebellion that cleared a path for the development of Self Psychology—and the rebellion of the patient Susan against an American president who has been hell-bent on destroying all democratic norms. And into the clinical narrative of Susan’s treatment Kaufmann also weaves a selective review of contemporary Self Psychological literature that aptly includes works by Terman, Lachmann, Orange, Brandchaft and others. The author makes a furt