The Future of Psychoanalysis. Arnold Goldberg, ed. New York:  International Universities Press, 1983.  490 pp.

If psychoanalysis is to have a viable future it must be changed and developed on the basis of observation and experimentation and not be viewed as a body of fixed principles. This principle of empirical science is emphasized by the editor in this Festchrift in honor of Heinz Kohut, the originator of self-psychology, possibly neglecting the role played by the kind of creative theory formation exemplified by Kohut's work.

Classical psychoanalysis views neurotic relatedness as a response to oedipal drive conflicts. In treatment the transference neurosis is a reenactment of the maladaptive responses to an unresolved Oedipus complex which can be resolved by interpretation. In the narcissistic neuroses, however, the patient relates to the analyst in another way. The narcissistic patient may feel dead and empty and lack affect, view the analyst as omnipotent or worthless and experience the analyst like those parts of himself of which he is unaware. Most modern analysts regard the patient's difficulties as the product of unresolved drive conflicts experienced during the pre-oedipal period. Kohut also sees the patient as being damaged primarily during the pre-oedipal period, but regards his difficulties as a result of “missing narcissistic structures” rather than as defenses against conflicting drives. Kohut postulates a “cohesive self” for the mature adult. The self, according to Kohut, matures and develops in response to appropriate empathic affective responses from the parents. For example, when the child is in an early omnipotent phase the appropriate affective response would be pleasure in the childs's expressions of grandiosity. The perception of parental affective communication teaches the child what he is feeling and builds structures of the self. The calming, soothing function of the mother, for example, is incorporated into the self and promotes object constancy. The Kohutian analyst through his “empathic immersion” in his patient's subjective state