Chapter 2 “Compensatory” or “Primary”: An Alternative View. Discussion of Marian Tolpin's “Compensatory Structures: Paths to the Restoration of the Self”

Marian Tolpin, in characteristic fashion, has given us a clear and cogent discussion of Kohut's concept, compensatory structures, and their crucial role in the face of thwarted development in realizing the program of the nuclear self. Assessing that the universality of compensatory structures is insufficiently recognized, Tolpin delineates, in keeping with Kohut's (1984) formulations, how further consolidation of compensatory structures is a central pathway in development and psychoanalytic treatment to the “restoration of the self.”

In my brief discussion I wish to raise some theoretical and developmental issues concerning the concept of compensatory structures and, then, to revisit the clinical example of Anna Freud.

On the basis of observing the transference, Kohut (1971, 1977, 1984) delineated three basic selfobject needs: the needs for mirroring, idealizing, and twinship. Subsequently, Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood (1987) have described self-validating and self-delineating needs,