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The self is the locus of the imagination
Most, perhaps all, theories, have a basis in metaphor. The fundamental metaphor of early psychoanalysis was the “pathogenic secret” (Ellenberger, 1970; Meares, 1987), out of which secondary metaphors evolved. Although there is wide agreement that this basic metaphor and its various offshoots of an energic and hydraulic kind are not generally applicable today, no replacement so compelling in its visual effect as it has yet emerged. Freud himself (1914), however, pointed to the possibility of an important alternative metaphor underlying the therapeutic process by making an analogy between the transference and a playspace (Spielraum) (p. 154). I will use this metaphor, from which some of the more important current approaches to personality disorder are derived, to explore ideas that lie at the heart of Kohut's method. The discussion focuses on the role of material objects in the development of the self.
Kohut (1984) regarded his conceptions of “optimal frustration” and “transmuting internalisation” as central to his therapeutic method and to his ideas about therapeutic change (p. 70). The value of therapeutic error is repeatedly stressed. For instance:
However correct an analyst's theories are, and how open minded he is in applying them, he cannot avoid erring many times in his understanding
Page 69of the analysand and in the explanations he offers to him…no harm ensues if the analyst recognises the patient's retreats and responds to them with appropriate interpretations. Such errors constitute optimal failures…after each, optimal new self structures will be acquired and existing ones will be firmed [p. 69].
Despite the clarity of this statement, it leaves us with mysteries. Why should the correction of therapeutic error be so important? How does error relate to structure? Is there something that underlies Kohut's idea, that is basic to it but is not expressed? What follows is an attempt to understand more fully the basis of