ABSTRACT
Kohut thought of the self as emerging slowly out of the process by which self and other differentiate.
‘In trying, in analysis after analysis, to determine the roots of the selves of my analysands, I obtained the impression that during early psychic development a process takes place in which some mental contents that had been experienced as belonging to the self become obliterated or are assigned to the area of the non-self, while others are retained within the self or are added to it. As a result of this process, a core self – the nuclear self – is established.
