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The Restoration of the Self is a companion volume to Kohut's 1971 work, The Analysis of the Self.1 In the earlier book, Kohut attempted to stitch his clinical discoveries of the "grandiose self" and "self-object idealizations" into classical metapsychology, but to this reviewer, the seams showed rather obviously. In the new volume, he introduces the idea of a "psychology of the self" as a psychological theory in its own right, one presumably standing alongside classical analytic theory.
In summary, Kohut's formulation is that narcissistic development proceeds along a path of its own and that objects within this growth line serve special functions as self-objects. To begin with, a mirroring self-object (usually a mother figure) allows the unfolding of grandiosity and exhibitionism; optimum phase-appropriate frustration permits a gradual modulation of these themes through a "transmuting internalization" of this mirroring function. Similarly, idealization of self-objects leads to a gradual internalization of ideals. Through these two processes a "bipolar self" emerges with its ambitions and ideals, utilizing those natural talents available to it; this "self" continues in varying degrees to require self-objects