ABSTRACT
The concept of self is an elusive one. George S. Klein used the term self, or self-schema, to mean what we have called ego in the schema model. In considering the role of empathy in psychoanalytic cure, H. Kohut asks whether the empathy of the psychoanalytic self psychologist is in essence different from that of analysts before the advent of self psychology and whether self psychologists achieve a cure through a novel kind of empathy. Klein conceived of the self as active in regard to the problems it confronts—both in resolving the demands made on it and in initiating purposes of its own. The sense of self has two aspects in dynamic equilibrium. One is individuality—“an autonomous unit, distinct from others as a locus of action and decision”; the other is “we-ness”—“one’s self construed as a necessary part of a unit transcending one’s autonomous actions”.
