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May 20, 1968. THE PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITIES: OUTLINE OF A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH. (Third Freud Anniversary Lecture.) Heinz Kohut, M.D.
In accordance with his previous conceptualizations, the idealized parent imago and the grandiose self, Dr. Kohut examines their therapeutic activation in what he refers to as the idealizing transference and the mirror transference.
The idealizing transference is the therapeutic revival of the early state in which the psyche saves a part of the lost experience of global narcissistic perfection by assigning it to an archaic (transitional) object—the idealized parent imago. Idealization whether it is directed at a dimly perceived archaic mother-breast or at a clearly recognized Oedipal parent, belongs genetically and dynamically in a narcissistic context. The stream of narcissism which is subsumed under the term, idealized parent imago, remains vulnerable throughout early development. The period of greatest vulnerability ends when an idealized superego has been formed. Under optimal circumstances, the child experiences gradual disappointment in the idealized object, leading to a withdrawal of the narcissistic idealizing cathexes from the object imago and to their gradual internalization. If the child suffers the loss of the idealized object, or disappointment in it, the needed internal structure is not acquired and the child's psyche remains fixated on the archaic object imago.
The mirror transference occurs in three forms, relating to specific states of development of the grandiose self: 1, an archaic form in which the self-experience of the analysand includes the analyst; 2, a less archaic form in which the patient assumes that the analyst is like him; 3, a still less archaic form in which the analyst is experienced as a separate person who has significance for the patient only as an approving and confirming 'mirror' of the patient's narcissistic display. If the development of the grandiose self is di