Self Psychology as a Shift Away from the Paranoid Strain in Classical Analytic Theory

Abstract

Classical psychoanalytic theory has a paranoid strain. There is, in effect, an "evil other"--the id--within each individual that must be tamed in development and confronted and worked through as resistance in treatment. This last has historically endgendered an adversarial relationship between patient and analyst. This paranoid strain came from a paranoid element in Freud's personality that affected his worldview, his relationships, and his theory. Self psychology offers a different view of development and conflict. It stresses the child's need for responsiveness from and admiration of caretakers in order to develop a well-functioning self. Though severe behavioral and character problems may result from faults in the process of self-construction, the essential need is not instinctual discharge but connection. Hence the long-assumed opposition between individual needs and social institutions or between patient and analyst is no longer inevitable or universal. Rather, an understanding of the primary need for connection creates both a different interpretive stance and a more cooperative ambience. These changes in theory and technique are traced to Kohut's personal struggles to emancipate himself from his paranoid mother.

A Battle Cry for Our Moment: Revisiting the Two Analyses of Mr. Z

“…We posit the concept of differentiating rage and appeal to all of us to dig down, find this affect state and express it to take back the power! Kohut, the Rebel: Emerging from the shadows Following Strozier's intellectual biography of Kohut (Strozier, 2001;Terman, 2014), we concur that Kohut wrote The Two Analyses of Mr. Z. as a telling chronicle of how he emerged from a merger with his narcissistic mother and mid-20 th Century classical Freudianism to become his own person and develop Self Psychology as an alternative perspective and approach. The structure and content of the case report powerfully convey the reasons for his rebellion and his developing his own contrasting perspective.…”

“…Most movingly, Kohut shows how the therapist's empathic presence enables the patient to bear and live through experiences of intense disintegration anxiety as he takes steps away from his previous merger with his mother and rebels against her omnipotent control. Here, he endured an agonizing process of individuating from his mother's paranoid core (Terman, 2014). Again, we encourage you to join us in imagining what Kohut must have gone through in living through these awful states on his own without the support of a holding therapist like himself.…”

“…Kohut was first part of the establishment, regarding himself as Mr. Psychoanalysis and being the President of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1964. Terman observes also that there is a paranoid structure to classical Freudian theory that paralleled Kohut's mother's paranoid core that probably drew Kohut even more to become a true disciple initially (Terman, 2014). He suggests that Kohut's differentiation from his mother, documented in Mr. Z, corresponded to and facilitated Kohut's rebellion against the classical Freudian tradition.…”

Heinz Kohut’s theory of aggression and rage.

“…The hopeful is always present in Kohut’s formulations that lack the grim and forbidding darkness, even paranoia, of the Freudian psychic landscape (Terman, 2014). It was an article of faith for Kohut that we can heal, and change.…”