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The selfobject concept was initially designated as such by Kohut (1971) as an alternative to Freud's exclusive focus on instinctual discharge as the sole motivator for behavior. As Kohut learned in his clinical work with patients who were suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder, these are not patients who are seeking the opportunity to discharge sexual or aggressive tension but, rather, those who need to repair a severely damaged self-concept. They experience themselves and/or behave as if there is something missing in their psychological armamentarium, and this painful sense of lacking, of not being whole, gives rise to the various counterproductive characterological symptoms that bring them for treatment. Their cure, Kohut found, lies in understanding and interpreting the origins of this deficit. The term selfobject was coined by Kohut to label the particular function that the analyst serves for such patients.
In terms of practice and technique, the concept of the selfobject is the most important contribution to our investigation and treatment of psychological life since Freud discovered the psychoanalytic method and the significance of the transference. Freud's great insight into the manner in which unconscious aspects of human motivation can be explored was distorted by his conviction that the neurotic's struggle with sexual and aggressive impulses represents the essence of human development. The assumption that every patient is basically attempting to use the analyst as a target for either anger or incestuous gratification led to the failure of psychoanalysis in a majority of cases and more or less