ABSTRACT
Self psychology has had a profound and far-reaching influence in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory, yet its place in the history of psychoanalytic ideas requires clarification. Kohut (1984) regarded self psychology as a unique theory, and his followers, with the exception of Bacal and Newman (1990), have tended to view self psychology in this way (for example, Wolf, 1988; Ornstein and Ornstein, 1995). Basch's (1995) statement that self psychology is the first original psychoanalytic paradigm since Freud is representative of the way self psychologists tend to place their theory in the history of psychoanalytic ideas.
