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The concept of the selfobject holds a central place in self psychological theory. Bacal (1994) stated that it is generally agreed that the selfobject concept is “the cornerstone of the self-psychological perspective in psychoanalysis” (p. 21). Ornstein (1991) characterized the selfobject concept as the single element of decisive difference between self psychology and other psychoanalytic models. Basch (1994) noted that thinking in terms of selfobject needs furnished a much-needed corrective to instinct theory and enabled the psychoanalytic method to be applied with much greater success to many more patients. He regarded the concept of the selfobject as the most important contribution to our understanding and treatment of psychological issues since Freud's discovery of the psychoanalytic method and the transference. Goldberg (1998) similarly portrayed the selfobject concept as Kohut's major theoretical contribution and the idea of the selfobject transference as Kohut's central contribution to clinical work.
Much has been written about this exceptionally important construct since Kohut's (1971) early description of providing a function for a patient rather than being viewed as an object of love and hate. Kohut's final book (1984) defined selfobject as “that dimension of our experience of another person that relates to this person's functions in shoring up our self” (pp. 49-50). Similarly, Wolf (1988) stressed that the selfobject is neither self nor object, but a subjective experience in which a more cohesive self is evoked or maintained. This emphasis on