ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the conditions under which the sharing of negative reactions to the patient by the analyst can be clinically useful—even necessary. Heinz Kohut emphasised the aspect of relating since he was trying to explain how infantile vitality and exuberant self-regard, as well as archaic idealism, got derailed into pathological narcissism. He was stressing an alternate view of optimal psychological health as rooted in continuous connectedness to others—rather than in an autonomy. Kohut emphasised the opening of new “channels of empathy” and also “intuneness with self and self objects”—but the emphasis seems to have been on the self as receiver rather than the provider of empathy. For Kohut, the archaic self object experience gradually evolves into mature self object experience. While people need selfobjects throughout their lives, the development of insight about other people’s rights and feelings, along with the capacity to “shore up the self” of the other, is also essential to self-development.
