Toward a Developmental Understanding of the Self Schema

Events of the last twenty years, such as a renewed emphasis on narcissistic pathology (Kohut, 1971), the application of psychoanalytic thinking to the treatment of borderline patients (Kernberg, 1975), the emphasis on developmental lines (A. Freud, 1965), and an emphasis on the preoedipal years, particularly the separation-individuation process (Mahler, Pine, and Bergman, 1975) have raised the concept of self to theoretical importance and scrutiny. Yet the concept of self has been described as occupying “a position within standard structural theory somewhere between the ego and limbo” (Rosenblatt and Thickstun, 1977, p. 300). Its theoretical importance has been consistently minimized by mainstream psychoanalytic thinkers (Rangell, 1982; Richards, 1982; Blum, 1982). At best it is viewed as relevant only in regard to its role in self representations