ABSTRACT
The listening perspective for this process of ongoing consolidation of the self-sense describes a “self-other tension” or the need to experience the recognition of the reassuring, confirming, or inspiring other as a consolidating part of one’s sense of self. Kohut used the term narcissistic for the mirroring, twinship, and idealizing transferences that arise in analysis and are based on self-other tensions. The other is recognized as a separate center of initiative but used as a cohesion-building function of the self. Self-other tensions motivate the person to address or seek out some significant other to achieve a sense of recognition, wholeness, and cohesion.Kohut and
the self psychologists have studied extensively how the self-sense can be brought into focus in the analytic experience.
