Introduction

This volume focuses on various theoretical and clinical issues that are of central concern today for the leading clinicians and theorists of self psychology. These current efforts are a continuation of Heinz Kohut's contributions, beginning with his discovery of what he then called the narcissistic transferences and his formulation of his theory of narcissism, embedded within the drive model and viewed as a complementary theory to the drive-defense model (Kohut, 1971), to his subsequent development of a comprehensive psychoanalytic theory of self psychology, in which the consolidation and regulation of the self dominates the scene (Kohut, 1984). In keeping with these theoretical and clinical changes and in the hope of briefly orienting the reader in anticipation of the intriguing and enlightening chapters to follow, I wish to present in an outline form what I consider to be the central contributions of self psychology and some of the emergent questions that the contributors address in this volume. In this Introduction I can, of course, mention only a few of the authors who have contributed significantly to the issues at hand.

Foremost was Kohut's (1959, 1982) placement of the empathic mode of observation, that is, observing and understanding from within the patient's frame of reference, at the very center of psychoanalytic inquiry and as the definer of the field itself. The definition of psychoanalysis, from a self psychological perspective, is no longer wedded to a particular