You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Since 1977 Kohut's extension of his psychology of the self has been widely discussed, but, until now, no book has offered a comparison analysis with other theories. With Self Psychology: Comparisons and Contrasts, that void has now been filled. The task was not an easy one, however, for, as Arnold Goldberg points out in his introduction, self psychology is “an infinite business” (p. xx) that embraces different groups and directions.
In this collection of essays, Kohut's ideas are tested against current philosophical, psychological, and historical trends. The contributors are either self psychologists themselves or proponents of other philosophical or psychoanalytic approaches. Some try to integrate self psychology into the mainstream, while others consider it a departure from classical psychoanalysis.
In the first section, on “Freud and the Historical Dissidents,” the leading paper, “A Comparison of Freud and Kohut: Apostasy and Synergy?” by Michael Basch, traces the origin of psychoanalysis and the evolution of Kohut's ideas. In 1959, Kohut defined empathy as the method of psychoanalysis, a position that led to his departure from Freudian theory in 1977. Basch shows how Kohut was led to his discoveries by a patient's insistence that he put aside his preconceptions and listen to her, opening a door to the analysis of nonneurotic patients. Even if Kohut's revision does not alter “the significance of Freud's clinical discoveries in any way” (p. 19), neurotic pathology is no longer paradigmatic for all of mental life, and the centrality of the Oedipus complex and the theory of instincts is called into question. Basch distinguishes psychoanalysis as a method (using free association and clinical generalizations) from psychoanalysis as an evolving explanatory