Self Psychology - Criticism

Criticism

Kohut, who was 'the center of a fervid cult in Chicago', aroused at times almost equally fervent criticism and opposition, emanating from at least three other directions: drive theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and object relations theory.

From the perspective of drive theory, Kohut appears 'as an important contributor to analytic technique and as a misguided theoretician...introduces assumptions that simply clutter up basic theory. The more postulates you make, the less their explanatory power becomes.' Offering no technical advances on standard analytic methods in 'his breathtakingly unreadable The Analysis of the Self ', Kohut simply seems to blame parental deficit for all childhood difficulties, disregarding the inherent conflicts of the drives: 'Where the orthodox Freudian sees sex everywhere, the Kohutian sees unempathic mothers everywhere - even in sex.'

To the Lacanian, Kohut's exclusive 'concern with the imaginary', to the exclusion of the Symbolic meant that 'not only the patient's narcissism is in question here, but also the analyst's narcissism.' The danger in 'the concept of the sympathetic or empathic analyst who is led astray towards an ideal of devotion and samaritan helping... its sadistic underpinnings' seemed only too clear.

From an object relations perspective, Kohut 'allows no place for internal determinants. The predicate is that a person's psychopathology is due to unattuned selfobjects, so all the bad is out there and we have a theory with a paranoid basis.' At the same time, 'any attempt at "being the better parent" has the effect of deflecting, even seducing, a patient from using the analyst or therapist in a negative transference...the empathic analyst, or "better" parent.'

With the passage of time, and the eclipse of grand narrative, it may now be possible to see the several strands of psychoanalytic theory less as fierce rivals and more 'as complementary partners. Drive psychology, ego psychology, object relations psychology and self psychology each have important insights to offer twenty-first-century clinicians.'