Introduction

There has certainly been a decade of progress in self psychology, and it has also been a decade of change and increasing diversity in understanding and conceptualization of theory and practice. This comes as no surprise; virtually each of the introductions to the previous volumes in this series makes a similar observation. This volume, as have the others, illustrates this broadening field with individual contributions spanning the range from extensions and new applications of Kohut's self psychology to a new paradigm, redefinitions of central concepts and challenges to the established ways of thinking about the analytic process and its goals. It is hard to say which way Kohut himself might have reacted to these developments, although I think he might have felt that amidst the diversity there remains intact a fundamental reliance on his basic discoveries. When self psychology is viewed from the outside, it is easier to see this unity; when viewed from within, the picture becomes more complex as the debate widens about central concepts. At the same time, this diversity does reflect and nourish creativity along multiple channels; in so doing, it has increasingly broadened both the appeal and relevance of psychoanalysis as a whole to the wider world and has undeniably enhanced its effectiveness in areas in which we were reliably failing.

The contributions to this volume may be divided into two categories: those that address the theoretical/conceptual issues I have just alluded to and those that apply one or another of these points of view to various subjects, “from homosexuality to conjoint therapy,” and do so in ways that offer new and revealing perspectives in areas that have resisted