In the second half of the twentieth century, there were two major disruptions to the hegemony of ego psychology in the United States, self psychology and relational psychoanalysis. Both schools shifted the clinical orientation from an isolated observation of the patient to a view that understood the patient as constituted in relationships, including the relationship between patient and analyst. However, self psychology emphasized the developing self of the patient and saw the transference relationship more as an ecosystem for growth than as an opportunity for insight and emancipation. When Heinz Kohut died in 1981, his ideas about a psychology of the self were still regarded as heretical by much of the American psychoanalytic establishment. Today many, if not most, of his ideas have been incorporated by other schools. The idea that empathy is the primary mode of observation in psychoanalysis, the significance of rupture-repair-sequences, and an emphasis on attuning to 'forward-edge' movements rather than focusing on defenses and distortions are ideas that have been taken up by contemporary clinicians of all persuasions.
In the course of this webinar, Daniel Goldin will first describe the twin pillars of Kohut's theory: empathy as /the/ mode of observation and the self-object concept. Second, he will elaborate ways self psychology has evolved to become more relational and constructivist, with a particular emphasis on what he calls the narrative turn in self-psychology. The analyst doesn't simply provide a mirroring function for the patient through the application of empathy. Rather, the analyst enters into a narrative dialogue with the patient about their experiences, in the present as well as in their life-world. Kohut believed people know themselves as whole in two ways: by feeling cohesive in the moment and continuous through time. Unity through time, what Kohut called 'the curve of life,' is always a narrative unity that takes shape through a circular process of telling and enacting, a looping effect that is at the heart of therapeutic action and can be considered a self-object transference in its own right.
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Video Lecture: New Directions in Self Psychology
Daniel Goldin, PsyD., is a psychoanalyst in private practice in South Pasadena (Los Angeles), where he treats adults, adolescents, and children, with a special interest in helping those in recovery. In a previous career, he wrote feature screenplays for most of the major Hollywood studios. More recently, he has also written for the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and The International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology.
