Heinz Kohut's work represents an important departure from the Freudian tradition of psychoanalysis. A founder of the Self Psychology movement in America, he based his practice on the belief that narcissistic vulnerabilities play a significant part in the suffering that brings people for treatment. Written predominantly for a psychoanalytic audience Kohut's work is often difficult to interpret. Siegel uses examples from his own practice to show how Kohut's innovative theories can be applied to other forms of treatment.
Heinz Kohut's work represents an important departure from the Freudian tradition of psychoanalysis. A founder of the Self Psychology movement in America, he based his practice on the belief that narcissistic vulnerabilities play a significant part in the suffering that brings people for treatment. Written predominantly for a psychoanalytic audience Kohut's work is often difficult to interpret. Siegel uses examples from his own practice to show how Kohut's innovative theories can be applied to other forms of treatment.
Kohut believed that narcissistic vulnerabilites play a significant part in the suffering that brings people for treatment. Siegel uses examples from his own practice to show how Kohut's theories can be applied to other forms of treatment.
Hailed as "a superb textbook aimed at introducing psychoanalytic self psychology to students of psychotherapy" (Robert D. Stolorow), Psychotherapy After Kohut is unique in its grasp of the theoretical, clinical, and historical grounds of the emergence of this new psychotherapy paradigm. Lee and Martin acknowledge self psychology's roots in Freud's pioneering clinical discoveries and go on to document its specific indebtedness to the work of Sandor Ferenczi and British object relations theory. Proceeding to readable, scholarly expositions of the principal concepts introduced by Heinz Kohut, the founder of self psychology, they skillfully explore the further blossoming of the paradigm in the decade following Kohut's death. In tracing the trajectory of self psychology after Kohut, Lee and Martin pay special attention to the impact of contemporary infancy research, intersubjectivity theory, and recent empirical and clinical findings about affect development and the meaning and treatment of trauma.
Now available in paper for the first time, this classic text is about how an analyst analyzes. Rooted in the theory of psychoanalytic self psychology as put forth by Heinz Kohut and his colleagues, Treating the Self focuses on the application of the self-psychological concept of the psyche to the actual conduct of psychoanalytic treatment. The result is not a "how-to" approach, but rather a volume that suggests a theory of treatment and offers guidelines for creative ways of thinking about therapy. Written by Ernest Wolf, a close collaborator of Heinz Kohut, this is a personal account of the process of self psychology presented by one of the foremost experts in the field.
Essays discuss courage, leadership, the roles of the group and the individual, narcissism, psychological aspects of history, ethics, civilization, and culture.
This comprehensive, introductory text makes the concepts of self psychology accessible for students and clinicians. It begins with an overview of the development of Kohut's ideas, particularly those on narcissism and narcissistic development and explains the self object concept that is at the core of the self psychological vision of human experience. It also includes brief overviews, of the allied theoretical perspectives of intersubjectivity and motivational systems theory. Numerous clinical vignettes are furnished to illustrate theoretical concepts as well as one continuous case vignette that is woven throughout the book.
The Austro-American psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut was one of the foremost leaders in his field and developed the school of self-psychology, which sets aside the Freudian explanations for behavior and looks instead at self/object relationships and empathy in order to shed light on human behavior. In How Does Analysis Cure? Kohut presents the theoretical framework for self-psychology, and carefully lays out how the self develops over the course of time. Kohut also specifically defines healthy and unhealthy cases of Oedipal complexes and narcissism, while investigating the nature of analysis itself as treatment for pathologies. This in-depth examination of “the talking cure” explores the lesser studied phenomena of psychoanalysis, including when it is beneficial for analyses to be left unfinished, and the changing definition of “normal.” An important work for working psychoanalysts, this book is important not only for psychologists, but also for anyone interested in the complex inner workings of the human psyche.
Delivered to advanced candidates at The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1974-75, The Chicago Institute Lectures reveal a Kohut in transition, a Kohut wrestling with the creative tension in psychoanalysis between tradition and innovation, between continuity and change, even as he worked toward the psychology of the self "in the broad sense" that marked his decisive break from traditional psychoanalytic thought. Lightly edited by the Tolpins to preserve their authenticy, these lectures preserve the voice, the intellectual style, and the pedagogical bearing of a gifted creator in the very midst of creation. We find here a casual Kohut, thinking through in a relaxed and conversational way the assumptions that would become foundational to mature self psychology. The developmental trajectory of self-selfobject relationships, the role of selfobject failures in different types of psychopathology, the complex relationship between givens and the psychological environment in pathogenesis, the role of conflict in normal development and in psychopathology--these are among the recurrent themes taken up in these lectures. And there are, as well, Kohut's provocative asides on the child-rearing practices of his day, including the contrast between over- and understimulation, the impact of healthy parental sexuality on child development, and the difference between the normal oedipal phase of the self and the Oedipus complex. The clinical viewpoint of mature self psychology is anticipated in many ways, perhaps no more clearly than in Kohut's powerful reassessment of the perversions. The Chicago Institute Lectures are more than a key historical document in the evolution of psychoanalytic self psychology; they preserve the voice, the intellectual style, and the pedagogical bearing of a gifted creator in the very midst of creation.
This collection of "comparisons and contrasts" explores Heinz Kohut's self psychology in relation to a wide-ranging group of modern thinkers, both inside and outside of analysis. Separate sections analyze self psychology alongside Freud and the first generation of psychoanalytic dissidents; British object relations theorists; and contemporary theorists like Kernberg, Mahler, Lacan, and Masterson.
