158 Part II Psychodynamic Theories
children will continue to depend on their mother’s physical presence for their own
security. Besides gaining some degree of object constancy, children must consoli-
date their individuality; that is, they must learn to function without their mother
and to develop other object relationships (Mahler et al., 1975).
The strength of Mahler’s theory is its elegant description of psychological
birth based on empirical observations that she and her colleagues made on child-
mother interactions. Although many of her tenets rely on inferences gleaned from
reactions of preverbal infants, her ideas can easily be extended to adults. Any errors
made during the first 3 years—the time of psychological birth—may result in later
regressions to a stage when a person had not yet achieved separation from the
mother and thus a sense of personal identity.Heinz Kohut’s View
Heinz Kohut (1913–1981) was born in Vienna to educated and talented Jewish
parents (Strozier, 2001). On the eve of World War II, he emigrated to England
and, a year later, he moved to the United States, where he spent most of his pro-
fessional life. He was a professional lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at
the University of Chicago, a member of the faculty at the Chicago Institute for
Psychoanalysis, and visiting professor of psychoanalysis at the University of
Cincinnati. A neurologist and a psychoanalyst, Kohut upset many psychoanalysts
in 1971 with his publication of The Analysis of the Self, which replaced the ego
with the concept of self. In addition to this book, aspects of his self psychology are
found in The Restoration of the Self (1977) and The Kohut Seminars (1987), edited
by Miriam Elson and published after Kohut’s death.
More than the other object relations theorists, Kohut emphasized the process
by which the self evolves from a vague and undifferentiated image to a clear and
precise sense of individual identity. As did other object relations theorists, he
focused on the early mother-child relationship as the key to understanding later
development. Kohut believed that human relatedness, not innate instinctual drives,
are at the core of human personality.
According to Kohut, infants require adult caregivers not only to gratify physical
needs but also to satisfy basic psychological needs. In caring for both physical and
psychological needs, adults, or selfobjects, treat infants as if they had a sense of self.
For example, parents will act with warmth, coldness, or indifference depending in part
on their infant’s behavior. Through the process of empathic interaction, the infant
takes in the selfobject’s responses as pride, guilt, shame, or envy—all attitudes that
eventually form the building blocks of the self. Kohut (1977) defined the self as “the
center of the individual’s psychological universe” (p. 311). The self gives unity and
consistency to one’s experiences, remains relatively stable over time, and is “the
center of initiative and a recipient of impressions” (p. 99). The self is also the child’s
focus of interpersonal relations, shaping how he or she will relate to parents and other
selfobjects.
Kohut (1971, 1977) believed that infants are naturally narcissistic. They are
self-centered, looking out exclusively for their own welfare and wishing to be
admired for who they are and what they do. The early self becomes crystallized
around two basic narcissistic needs: (1) the need to exhibit the grandiose self and