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We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
Kohut's revolutionary visions of the selfobject concept and the subjective experience of the self, as Levinson and Atwood remind us, set the analytic stage for intersubjectivity theory's emphasis of the way in which human relatedness to the vitally needed other is central to the consolidation of authentic self-experience. They delineate and highlight those variations in the sense of self that are organized and regulated from within a system of mutual and reciprocal, though asymmetrical, influence. These include the sense of self-cohesion, self-continuity, self-esteem, and finally, self-agency.
Levinson and Atwood conceptually reposition the notion of the individual's sense of agency into a more essential, foreground position in the organization of the individual's self-experience. Without it, they state, “only a false or ‘borrowed’ sense of self-cohesion” will obtain.