Discussion of Ron Bodansky’s Case Presentation: How We Explain Psychoanalytic Improvement in Patients Who Have Been Severely Traumatized

In this article, I discuss Ron Bodansky’s presentation (this issue), “Release from Developmental Arrest,” from a Viennese perspective. Vienna, Kohut’s birthplace, the town in which he spent his childhood and adolescence, where he studied and had his first analysis with August Aichhorn, was the place to establish the first Self Psychological Training Institute in Europe: the Vienna Circle for Psychoanalysis and Self Psychology, a state recognized Training Institute, founded in 1987.

Which direction has Self Psychology been taking in Austria since then? We began with the exploration of self-structure, moved via empathy to a focus on selfobject experiences and then many of us joined in the appreciation of the importance of intersubjectivity theory. My discussion reflects this particular theoretical orientation, an orientation that makes the attempt to observe and understand both the ongoing process of mutual influence that is at the heart of intersubjectivity theory, as well as the self object needs and transferences that become mobilized in the patient within this process.