Chapter 11 Dyadic Capacity: Progress in Narcissistic Development

Freud (1914) first described narcissism as the cathexis of libido to the self. The dominant understanding of Freud's concept of narcissism suggests that personality development proceeds from primary narcissism to autoeroticism to object love. Kohut (1971) argued against this interpretation and, instead, made a case for understanding narcissism as secondary to the failure of object love. Kohut (1971, 1977) has further formulated our understanding of defensive narcissism in terms of a self-focus that protects a fragile self, weakened and easily fragmented by the failure of requisite selfobject responsiveness from early caregivers. The immature or weakened self requires archaic selfobject functions from the relational surround in order to maintain the stability and cohesion of the self. Gradually, as self-structure develops greater cohesion, selfobject needs progress from more archaic to more mature forms.

Kohut (1971) was the first to posit separate lines of development for narcissism and object relations. He suggested that psychoanalytic cure, from a self-psychological perspective, could be characterized by progress in narcissistic development, that is, greater self-cohesion and “structural completeness,” which meant greater energy for the unfolding of productive capacity, not necessarily the capacity for “unambivalent object love” (or the capacity for empathy) (Kohut, 1984, p. 7). Although, in his view, the capacity for object love and for empathy may, indeed, be byproducts