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But each honest thinker who is basically an empiricist has to have some truth in his position, no matter how extremely he has formulated it. The problem is to find the truth underneath the exaggeration, to cut away the excess elaboration or distortion and include the truth where it fits.
There is a sizeable core of truth in Kohut's theory of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, but it is a truth that is exaggerated and single-minded, and, moreover, one needs to know where it fits within preexisitng psychoanalytic knowledge.
Kohut compares the theories of self psychology to Brunelleschi's discovery of the laws of perspective, a discovery that transformed painting and taught men to see in a new way. Only time will tell whether self psychology has revolutionized our psychoanalytic vision, but if I may be permitted another visual analogy — self psychology is a high-power lens that may allow us to see things in greater detail, but at the expense of a significant narrowing of the visual field.
Kohut believes that psychoanalysis cures by means of a “corrective emotional experience.” Although he does not use this term he acknowledges that his theory of cure can be placed within the same generic category. Kohut prefers the term “transmuting internalization.” That