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When I first came across Kohut's work, one of its most appealing aspects to me was its emphasis on the ongoing connectedness among people throughout life. Kohut's statements on this are very familiar, as in this 1984 quotation:
Self psychology holds that selfobject relationships form the essence of psychological life from birth to death, that a move from dependence (symbiosis) to independence (autonomy) in the psychological sphere is no more possible, let alone desirable, than a corresponding move from a life dependent on oxygen to a life independent of it in the biological sphere. The developments that characterize normal psychological life must, in our view, be seen in the changing nature of the relationship between the self and its selfobjects, but not in the self's relinquishment of selfobjects [p. 47].
Having learned from clinical experience and study about the ways selfobjects function in therapy and having an ongoing interest in adult development, I wanted to know more about this developmental aspect of selfobjects. How do selfobjects function in ordinary development throughout the life span? And just how should “this dimension of a good life be elaborated in the course of childhood and adolescence in order to lead to a fruitful maturity?” (Kohut, 1980a, p. 452).
Because self psychology generally deals with therapy, it is hard to find much discussion of selfobjects as they occur in normal lives outside therapy.