Chapter 16 Response to Discussion of Self Psychology Paper

As Senator Joseph McCarthy would say, “Are you now or have you ever been a self psychologist? Answer yes or no, or stand in contempt.” Or for that matter: “Will you pledge allegiance to social-constructivism and the constructed but unequivocal truth for which it stands, with malice and contempt for all others?” I trust you see that to call a construction unequivocal is a contradiction in terms.

I mean to imply one of my criticisms of my chapter. It has too much the tone of “What club do you belong to?” Thank goodness for the wisdom of Groucho Marx, who, as you all know, said, “I wouldn't join any club that would have me.” Freud explained opposition to his theory in terms of his theory: people can't stand to have their instinctual drives exposed. Kohut, too, explains opposition to his theory in terms of his theory: people need to belong to a club to maintain a cohesive self. As members of a club, people can mirror each other, idealize a founding father or a contemporary leader, and find clones in each other. That all makes good sense to me and is self psychology, is it not? Or is that just superficial or, to paraphrase Freud, a lullaby that is only the surface reflection of the mighty symphony of instinctual drive?

Leider suggests that my chapter is mistitled. But I think that the term Kohut's self psychology is a generic name for a system of thought, just as Freudian psychoanalysis is the name for a system of thought that was begun by Freud but is hardly as he left it. Perhaps Kohutian would be a better term here than Kohut's self psychology. I said in one of the drafts with which I inundated my discussants during my hermeneutic