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Psychoanalysts tend to agree that what distinguishes psychoanalytic treatment from all other forms of psychotherapy is the emphasis placed on the development and analysis of the transference (Greenson, 1967). Although significant changes have occurred in psychoanalytic theory and practice since Freud, object transferences continue to be seen as Freud did in 1905, namely as new editions of old object relationships (Freud, 1905).
A significant shift in thinking about transference began with the development of self psychology. In his preface to the Restoration of the Self, Kohut (1977) wrote that he considered his discovery of selfobject transferences to be his most important clinical finding. Kohut described selfobject transferences as “the reactivation … of structure-building attempts that had been thwarted during childhood” (p. 173n.). In a selfobject transference, the analyst is not an “object” in the traditional psychoanalytic use of the term but, instead, is part of undifferentiated self-experience (Basch, 1991). Although Kohut never denied the importance of object transferences, self psychology has tended to place the bulk of its attention on the selfobject transferences.