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If I were asked to recommend one book among the burgeoning offerings on self psychology, it would be this monograph by Ernest Wolf. In a direct, clear style, Wolf has provided a succinct but comprehensive description of psychoanalysis from the perspective of self psychology.
The book is organized into two sections, of roughly equal length, on theory and its clinical application. Wolf begins by tracing the evolution of the concept of "self" from Freud, who did not distinguish it clearly from "ego," through Hartmann, Fairbairn, Guntrip, and Winnicott. He attributes the resistance to interest in the narcissistic and borderline disorders to ongoing focus on the classical neuroses and to a moral aversion to problems that derive from a "miscarried love of self." Wolf notes that "our Judeo-Christian civilization … can sometimes forgive and try to redeem the man who is victim of his passions, whether they be sexual or aggressive, but … finds it very difficult to give a fair hearing to the man who presents himself as smugly superior or arrogantly self-righteous… Yet, it seems, the time to face our own narcissism has come" (p. 8).
Wolf describes the theory as follows. There is a central psychological structure, the self, and "[s]elf psychology is the study of this structure, its subjective manifestations, and its vicissitudes" (p. 11). The selfobject is defined as the experience of the presence of others that evokes the emergence of the self and the maintenance of its cohesion. Faulty selfobject experiences lead to fragmentation of the self, variously experienced as a loss of self-esteem or as a feeling of emptiness, depression, worthlessness, or anxiety. Selfobject experiences are necessary throughout life. In early life, they must be provided