ABSTRACT
Although tacitly accepted as an important element in the therapeutic practice of psychoanalysis, the concept of optimal frustration has received little theoretical clarification. The publication of Heinz Kohut's (1977a) landmark work The Restoration of the Self established optimal frustration as a central aspect of the curative process viewed from the perspective of self psychology. With one of his critics, Kohut (1977b) recognized the problematic nature of the question “What is optimal?,” yet he never arrived at a satisfactory answer.
