Preface

Several years after the publication of the second of Heinz Kohut's books on psychoanalytic self psychology (Kohut, 1977), he asked a group of colleagues to join with him in compiling a book of a series of essays that would focus on answers to the critics of his work. I clearly remember the initial meeting, which, because of the group's size, took place in a small meeting room in a hotel. I do not remember all of the attendees, but they were those of his friends and students who had long been interested in and associated with Kohut's work. Our first meeting was noteworthy because of the extensive discussion about whether we should indeed devote the time and energy required to answer all of the many and varied criticisms. There were those of us who felt that it would profit us more to direct attention to advancing further the tenets of self psychology and so ignore the opposing voices. There were others who felt that self psychology faced a danger of being further alienated from the mainstream of psychoanalysis, and thus its proponents must devote themselves to responding to those many worthwhile critical examinations that called attention to weaknesses or errors in the concepts of self psychology. And there was Kohut himself who thought we should do both.

Over the years the group met regularly with the avowed aim of compiling a list of criticisms and questions that we would discuss at length. We would then prepare, in turn, a series of position papers on the varied topics. Not surprisingly the discussion and the papers took on lives of their own, and our hoped-for book of responses seems still to be percolating on the stove. One of the reasons for this unfulfilled promise was that every question seemed to invite a plethora of associated questions to come along with it, and soon we found ourselves questioning anything and everything about psychoanalysis itself.

In order to gain some perspective on the more outstanding questions and criticisms about self psychology we de