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.
This issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry has been designed to address the new directions that have emerged in self-psychology after Kohut, and the product has demonstrated just how alive and well, how creative and divergent, the field has become. In this final essay, we address two issues, embodied in two sections. The first section, written by Estelle Shane, concerns the evolution of relational self-psychology. Self-psychology began with Kohut’s original and incomparable contribution embodied in a one-person system, or, as Kohut himself said, a one-and-one-half person system that includes the patient and the analyst’s selfobject function, moving in time to its more contemporary two-person version, and more particularly in this Afterward, to my own conception of a Relational Self Psychology.
The second section concerns an examination of the Many Faces of Self Psychology that are envisioned by the creative analysts who have contributed to this issue. Reading these individual articles illustrates how extraordinarily alive and generative this perspective remains, as reflected in the hands of these, as well as so many other, devotees of this approach. This second section is written by Elizabeth Carr with the contributions of Estelle Shane.
I have been writing versions of a Relational Self Psychology for many years, well over a decade, originally and for a long time alone, then with Lucyann Carlton, then with Barry Magid, then in dialogue with Jim Fosshage, and now with both Barry Magid and Jim Fosshage, the three of us currently coauthoring a history and anthology of the evolution of Relational Self Psychology. In the greatly abbreviated version of my Relational Self Psychology below, much derives from other formats, either, in some instances, composed alone, or in others in deep collaboration with my coauthors, and in particular Barry Magid.
Relational Self Psychology as I perceive it is a contemporary perspective. While many of Kohut’s