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It is impressive to observe the development of Kohut's thinking as it is spelled out in his chapter on defense and resistance. In providing new insights to the concepts of defense and resistance from the perspective of the experiencing self it stands out as a substantial contribution to the development of self psychology and psychoanalysis as a whole.
It is exciting to remember that this significant reconsideration of the concepts of defense and resistance could be said to have begun in 1957 with the paper on “Introspection, Empathy and Psychoanalysis.” From that point forward, neither Heinz Kohut nor the psychoanalysis to which he was professionally wed could ever again be the same. It was there that he made the observation that “the observational method defines the contents and the limits of the observed field,” and these in turn, with what data are available for observation, “determine the theories of an empirical science” (Kohut, 1957, p. 212). How simple, how unassailable, how elegant!
The subsequent development of Kohut's theory shows the progressive results of the application of this principle, and the reexamination of old and rarely questioned assumptions with the use of this added tool. It is an inspired and dedicated lifework that culminates in the unequivocal statement that
it is the self and the survival of its nuclear program that is the basic force in the personality and that, in the last resort and on the deepest level, the analyst will necessarily find himself face-to-face with these basic motivating forces in the patient. (Kohut, 1983, p. 233)
Kohut begins this chapter by recalling that the theoretical model that shaped Freud's earliest therapeutic efforts was hypnosis. Freud had come to recognize that he needed new data in order to extend his therapeutic limits and he undertook yet another step in the direction that had launched