PEP | Article - Kohut: A Book Review Essay: Because it emerged slowly out of evolving theory and practice, Kohut's work is much harder to bring into focus than revisions based on a concise doctrine, or a simple model, or a special animus. Ornstein (in Kohut, 1978) offers a useful guide, but of course he views the system from within the system, where empathy is already given such a singular position that it can by itself account for the development of the theory. The outside critic will have to first cast the organically developing theory into a form that feels like a progressively developing argument before he can place it in the field of contesting theories.

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ABSTRACT

Kohut's homeostatic account of mental events in terms of their self-preservative function may be a compromise between a theory of affective markers of psychic differentiation and a theory of self-esteem drives. Similarly, an appreciative style of treatment, designed to keep the analyst available for the exercise of growth needs, is supplemented by the interpretive task of integrating incongruent tendencies. Kohut's work raises interesting questions about theoretical circularity, freedom from a single set of conceptual principles, the value of en bloc histories of affective constellations, and the consequences of a treatment at once exculpatory and judgmental.

PEP | Article - Kohut: A Book Review Essay: Because it emerged slowly out of evolving theory and practice, Kohut's work is much harder to bring into focus than revisions based on a concise doctrine, or a simple model, or a special animus. Ornstein (in Kohut, 1978) offers a useful guide, but of course he views the system from within the system, where empathy is already given such a singular position that it can by itself account for the development of the theory. The outside critic will have to first cast the organically developing theory into a form that feels like a progressively developing argument before he can place it in the field of contesting theories. - Friedman, Lawrence