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In his posthumous work, How Does Analysis Cure?, Kohut remarked that
whereas self psychology relies on the same tools as traditional analysis (interpretation followed by working through in an atmosphere of abstinence) to bring about the analytic cure, self psychology sees in a different light not only the results that are achieved, but also the very role that interpretation and working through play in the analytic process. (1984, p. 75)
This chapter elaborates, beyond Kohut's commentaries in How Does Analysis Cure? and in other writings (1971, 1977), a self psychological conception of “working through.” Before turning to this task, however, we must briefly review the way Freud and his successors utilized this notion, thereby showing in stark contrast the “different light” to which Kohut drew attention.
Among Freud's earliest technical guidelines to analysts was the admonition that merely calling attention to resistance on a single occasion would not promote therapeutic change. He observed,
One must allow the patient time to become more conversant with this resistance with which he has now become acquainted, to “work through,” to overcome it by continuing, in defiance of it, the analytic work according to the fundamental rule of analysis. Only when the resistance is at its height can the analyst, working in common with the patient, discover the repressed instinctual impulses which are feeding the resistance; and it is this kind of experience which convinces the patient of the existence and power of such impulses. (1914, p. 155)
Freud's emphasis on the need to overcome resistance to repressed instinctual derivatives was, of course, integral to his theory of analytic cure. He propounded this perspective on resistance to great effect in