Introduction

What is “progress” in self psychology and howdo we bring it about? One strategy is to measure progress by expansion and illustration of the basic tenets Kohut bequeathed to us. Marian Tolpin lifts the concept of building compensatory structures out of Kohut's many suggestions about the paths to reach one's inner design. Through a case study of Anna Freud and her self-restorative relationship with Dorothy Burlingham, Tolpin describes how the brilliant daughter of an overwhelming father and neglectful mother progressed in her development despite a primary deficit in self-structure. Fosshage, in his discussion of Tolpin's paper, seeks progress in another direction. While accepting Tolpin's account of Anna Freud's development, he challenges the concepts of primary and compensatory structures and even that of deficit. For deficit, he substitutes problematic psychological schemas and, for compensatory structure building, he suggests the relentless search for different attachment experiences or success in other motivational systems. How might the reader take this disparity? I recommend that the reader enjoy it. Tolpin's paper has the great advantage of its aesthetic appeal through the coherence of the story it tells. Kohut meant to leave some of his concepts as loose nonlinear evocations, instruments for conceptual play. I believe that with his immersion in the realm of creativity Kohut understood that discovery is enhanced when “science” does not pull the strings too tight around a conceptual framework. He recognized that this had happened with ego psychology. Kohut did not win adherents to self psychology primarily because of concepts like narcissistic libido, bipolar self, and primary or compensatory self-structures, all of which have been or could