This article seeks to compare the theories and techniques of Hyman Spotnitz and Heinz Kohut. Both clinicians have founded schools of psychoanalysis, namely, modern psychoanalysis and self psychology. Both clinicians have been recognized as having successfully treated the bane of Freud's therapeutic endeavors, the narcissistic neuroses. At the same time, there has been little communication between the aforementioned schools.

Bernstein (1986) compared Spotnitz and Kohut along the three obstacles Freud thought rendered the narcissistic patient untreatable: indifference, hostility, and the absence of a coherent ego. She concluded that there was considerable overlap between the two systems. The present article builds on Bernstein's work and Detrick and Detrick's (1989) volume in which Kohut is compared to twenty other clinicians.