How to understand kohut?

During the Spring Festival, I took time to read kohut's "The Cure of Psychoanalysis" and found some interesting places. So, extract some interesting contents paragraph by paragraph to share with you.

1。 Concepts and Theories of Psychoanalysis (1963, P369-37 1) and The Way to Cure by Psychoanalysis (P 109) found that the content of self-psychology is very rich. Although it didn't really appear in 1963, this concept was directly applied to fully mature self-psychology.

As far as the concept of "legitimate frustration" is concerned, it seems to contain many overlaps with Bion's concept of tolerance, and the document I have seen here is about 1962 (as you know, there is still an earlier time to prompt), and kohut similarly described the concept of "legitimate frustration" in his works 1963:

Quotations from kohut, which appeared in his book 1963:

"The psychological structure of neutralization is an inseparable part of the mind ... it comes from the internalization of countless just-right setbacks.

Just the right sense of frustration ... the replication (identification) of experience is established through an injection mechanism ... the prohibition of parents hinders the progress of children. If these prohibitions are non-traumatic, then through countless benign encounters, children will absorb the constraints and driving attitudes of their parents. . . . . . . In this way, if a child shoots many appropriate setbacks, his inner drive in infancy can be controlled with a calm, soothing and caring attitude, instead of being overwhelmed by his parents' anti-aggressive attitude, and the child can handle his inner drive requirements in the same way in the future.

The most important source of a well-functioning psychological structure is the personality of parents, especially their ability to respond to children's driving needs with determination without hostility and affection without temptation. "

Bion also emphasized tolerance in 1962. Babies are often overwhelmed by extreme and irreconcilable emotions, which will be conveyed on their faces or when crying or muttering. By listening and observing, caring parents accept these feelings, adjust them, change them, give them meaning, and then reflect them to their children. Children eventually internalize these processes and learn to tolerate their emotions, or change their inner emotional experience (parents' emotional reflection) because of this.

Kohut made it very clear here. What do you think are the similarities between these two concepts? I want to hear your opinions.

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2。 Kohut put forward a constructive suggestion in his "The Cure of Psychoanalysis", thinking that self-psychology may not be different from classical psychoanalysis or Klein School in contemporary practice, but summed up more effective therapeutic factors.

These therapeutic factors are not unique to self-psychology, but exist in effective psychoanalytic therapy, but the difference may only be unconscious and conscious.

For example, projected identity, as an objective phenomenon in the clinical process, will be encountered not only by Klein school experts, but also by self-psychologists. In kohut's analysis, kohut thinks that what really matters may not be all the contents being interpreted, but the atmosphere and the therapist's way when interpreting the contents. The existence of any clinically meaningful therapeutic factors may be more common than school theory.

Westen of the United States also discussed the similarity in his paper, and he divided the whole treatment into eight stages of clinical interaction.

Kohut's description of the process of psychological development has many similarities with the English school of object relations in content, or they describe many of the same things, but with different terms. There is an important reason for this difference in terminology, which is values. British people accept narcissism differently from Americans. Kohut can talk about psychological process with narcissism and a set of corresponding concepts generously, while the British often carefully avoid narcissism and use some other terms to express it. This situation is a bit like the influence of the therapist's anti-communism on the treatment during the treatment.

If the treatment of classical psychoanalysis is the Oedipus problem of three people, then the treatment of object relationship theory is the object relationship unit of two people, while self-psychology is aimed at one person's self.

3。 Kohut pointed out in The Cure of Psychoanalysis that the main ideological source of self-psychology is self-psychology (founded by Sigmund Hartman, a closed disciple of Freud who emigrated to the United States), and kohut was more of a member of self-psychology before self-psychology. The influence of object relation theory on kohut is less than that of self-psychology, especially that of Hartman and Jacobson in self-psychology.

4。 Another clarification made by kohut in The Method of Curing Psychoanalysis is that there is a certain relationship between self-psychology and the theory of object relationship. "Ego-psychology thinks that the relationship between self and self-object is an element of mental life all one's life ... Ego-psychology also thinks that at the psychological level, people can't develop from dependence (* * *) to independence (autonomy). In our view, the development of normal psychological life is characterized by the concept of the essence of the relationship between self and self-object, rather than the process of self-abandoning self-object. More specifically, we can't understand this progress from the viewpoint of replacing the self-object with the object of love or changing from narcissism to object love' (1984).

Compared with the object relationship theory, the point emphasized by self-psychology is close to the point of absolute dependence or narcissism in Winnicott's object relationship theory. However, self-psychology describes this as the basis of self-lifelong core function, not just the early stage.

5。 However, some objectivists questioned, "Does this mean that the human ego is too fragile from the perspective of self-psychology?"

In the answer of personal psychology, when the personal object is in contact with itself, the function of the personal object will be internalized into itself. If self-development in early life is closely linked with health and texture, then unless it is a huge external creative blow, such as sudden widowhood, long-term imprisonment, spy torture during the Cold War, etc. Self may be seriously traumatized.

But even in such an incident, kohut still believes that as long as this person's torture or attack does not lead to this person's schizophrenia and insanity, this person's self still has many resources to recover, and it may be better to recover after a period of practice. It can be seen that ego psychology thinks that ego is not fragile. However, this is only the difference caused by different positions and angles of object relationship theory.

This is also reflected in the long-term seclusion and seclusion of Buddhism in Tibet and Myanmar that I have studied. They have lived in seclusion for at least three years, but good work and rest and some rituals to build their connection with the object are enough to mobilize a person's early internal resources and achieve mental health and even spiritual progress. There is no nervous breakdown after being alone.

I think kohut's expression of this concept seems to be clearer than Jon's tolerance.

At least in the explanation of psychological mechanism, it is more straightforward and predictable. Tolerance certainly has a lexical advantage in explaining attitude.

If you can have friends who are aware of the difference between these two concepts, please give me more advice.

6。 In the book Psychoanalysis and Cure, kohut thinks that Klein school analysts often use good breasts and so on as terms of direct explanation in their early work. In fact, this is a cruel analysis. However, the reason why they often succeed lies not in Klein's explanation, but in the tolerance and empathy of therapists, which is the key to make visitors change.

Klein School's explanation was no longer used by Klein School, but paid more attention to the inclusive way, or inclusive atmosphere.

So at this point, kohut thinks that Klein School is more conducive to visitors' interest than Freud's classical school.

What kohut wants to explain in his works is that contemporary psychoanalysis, including Hartmann School, Klein School and Winnicott School, presents more inclusive and similar therapeutic characteristics, which are refined into conscious by self-psychology.

At the same time, the anger or temptation of visitors to therapists and other objects should be understood as a secondary state of narcissistic needs, not a primary state. It is a transfer relationship that occurs when the ego meets the ego object. Therapists need to immerse themselves in the visitor's self, as the self-object in the newly frustrated interaction (I think this seems to have something to do with the setting of treatment). Thus, the visitor's self obtains better self-object function or self-coordination function.

Kohut believes that this understanding of self-psychology can make therapists understand the whole treatment process and visitors more widely. However, Bocklin schools may have less inappropriate confrontation, and at the same time be more moderately flexible and less indifferent in setting. In particular, there is no presupposition of mature moralism set by classical school and Klein school.

That's why kohut thinks that although the successful people of Hartmann School, Klein School and Winnicott School will certainly have quite good or exactly the same curative effect as self-psychology, the perspective of self-psychology and the therapist's attitude towards visitors will be broader and more similar. This is also the necessity of the existence of ego psychology-for kohut and his school.

7。 Kohut pointed out that the history of psychoanalysis shows that the essence of analytical therapy has evolved with the deepening understanding of the psychological structure of visitors.

The change of the nature of treatment has experienced at least four changes.

Classical early psychoanalysis emphasized that the essence of healing is the expansion from consciousness to unconsciousness.

Self-psychology emphasizes that the essence of healing is actually the expansion of self-function to my field.

According to the theory of object relationship, therapy is the internalization of good objects and the establishment of healthy object relationship.

According to the theory of self-psychology, the essence of treatment is the contact between self and object.

8。 Kohut's opposition to self-psychology is only a simple psychoanalysis, which only emphasizes the criticism of understanding.

He pointed out that in self-psychology, therapy actually has two parts: understanding the ecstasy of visitors and interpreting the psychology of visitors. So it's not as simple as I thought.

9。 The book points out that in actual treatment, theory can only be a reference frame, and patients cannot be considered according to theory. But no matter how therapists don't use theory, in practice, therapists will still be limited by some kind of value understanding framework, so learning a broad theory is of great help to the treatment process and understanding visitors.