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The self is a key construct in several schools of psychology, especially in Self Psychology, a paradigm first associated with psychoanlytic theorist Heinz Kohut. {redirect|Psychological science|the journal|Psychological Science (journal)}} Not to be confused with Phycology. ...
Self psychology is a school of psychoanalytic theory and therapy developed in the United States. ...
Best known for his development of Self Psychology, a school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory, psychiatrist Heinz Kohuts contributions transformed the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches. ...
The Self in Kohut's Formulation
Heinz Kohut[1] initially proposed a bipolar self compromising two systems of narcisstic perfection: 1) a system of ambitions and, 2) a system of ideals. Kohut called the pole of ambitions the narcisstic self (later, the grandiose self [2]), while the pole of ideals was designated the idealized parental imago. According to Kohut, these poles of the self represented natural progressions in the psychic life of infants and toddlers.
Kohut argued that when the chid's ambitions and exhibitionistic strivings were chronically frustrated, arrests in the grandiose self led to the preservation of a false, expansive sense of self that could manifest outwardly, in the visible grandiosity of the frank narcissist, or remain hidden from view, unless discovered in a narcisstic therapeutic transference (or selfobject transference) that would expose these primitive grandiose fantasies and strivings. Kohut termed this form of transference a mirror transference. In this transference, the strivings of the grandiose self are mobilized and the patient attempts to use the therapist to gratify these strivings.
Kohut proposed that arrests in the pole of ideals occurred when the child suffered chronic and excessive disappointment over the failings of early idealized figures. Deficits in the pole of ideals were associated with the development of an idealizing transference to the therapist who becomes associated with the patient's primitive fantasies of omnipotent parental perfection.
Kohut believed that narcisstic injuries were inevitable and, in any case, necessary to temper ambitions and ideals with realism through the experience of more manageable frustrations and disappointments. It was the chronicity and lack of recovery from these injuries (arising from a number of possible causes) that he regarded as central to the preservation of primitive self systems untempered by realism.
By 1984,[3] Kohut's observation of patients led him to propose two additional forms of transference associated with self deficits: 1) the twinship and, 2) the merger transference. In his later years, Kohut believed that selfobject needs were both present and quite varied in normal individuals, as well as in naricissistic individuals.
To be clear, selfobjects are not external persons. Kohut and Wolf, 1978 [4] explain:
"Selfobjects are objects which we experience as part of our self; the expected control over them is, therefore, closer to the concept of control which a grownup expects to have over his own body and mind than to the concept of control which he expects to have over others. (p.413)"
Kohut's notion of the self can be difficult to grasp because it is experience-distant, although it is posited based upon experience-near observation of the therapeutic transference. Kohut relied heavily on empathy as a method of observation. Specifically, the clinician's observations of his or her own feelings in the transference help the clinician see things from the subjective view of the patient -- to experience the world in ways that are closer to the way the patient experiences it. (note: Kohut did not regard empathy as curative. Empathy is a method of observation).
A critique of the concept of selfhood 'Selfhood' or complete autonomy is a common Western approach to psychology and models of self are employed constantly in areas such as psychotherapy and self help. Edward E. Sampson (1989) argues that the preoccupation with independence is harmful in that it creates racial, sexual and national divides and does not allow for observation of the self-in-other and other-in-self. Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. ...
The term self-help can refer to any case or practice whereby an individual or a group attempts self-guided improvement[1]—economically, intellectually or emotionally. ...
Year 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar). ...
The Other or constitutive other (also referred to as othering) is a key concept in continental philosophy, opposed to the Same. ...
The very notion of selfhood is an attacked idea because it is seen as necessary for the mechanisms of advanced capitalism to function. In Inventing our selves: Psychology, power, and personhood, Nikolas Rose (1998) proposes that psychology is now employed as a technology that allows humans to buy into an invented and arguably false sense of self. Rose sees that freedom assists governments and exploitation.
It is said by some that for an individual to talk about, explain, understand or judge oneself is linguistically impossible, since it requires the self to understand its self. This is seen as philosophically invalid, being self-referential, or reification, also known as a Circular argument. Thus, if actions arise so that the self attempts self-explanation, confusion may well occur within linguistic mental pathways and processes. Reification, also called hypostatization, is treating a concept, an abstraction, as if it were a real, concrete thing. ...
Begging the question, in modern popular usage, is often used synonymously for raising the question. However the original meaning is quite different: it described a type of logical fallacy (also called petitio principii) in which the evidence given for a proposition as much needs to be proved as the proposition...
References - ^ Kohut, H. (1966) Forms and Transformations of Narcissism. In Self Psychology and the Humanities, ed. C. Strozier. New York:, Northon, 1985 pp. 97-123
- ^ Kohut, H. (1971) The Analysis of the Self. New York: International Universities Press
- ^ How Does Analysis Cure Insert ed. A Golberg and P Stepansky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
- ^ Disorders of the Self and Their Treatment. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 59: 413-425
See also A self is an individual person, from his or her own perspective. ...
Identity is an umbrella term used throughout the social sciences for an individuals comprehension of him or herself as a discrete, separate entity. ...
A persons self image is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to objective investigation by others (height, weight, hair color, nature of external genitalia, I.Q. score, is this person double-jointed, etc. ...
In philosophy, the self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of an idiosyncratic conciousness. ...
From a classical sociological perspective, the self is a relatively stable set of perceptions of who we are in relation to ourselves, to others, and to social systems. ...
Self psychology is a school of psychoanalytic theory and therapy developed in the United States. ...
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