ABSTRACT
As noted earlier, Kohut's work was enthusiastically welcomed in some quarters and severely criticized in others. His harshest critics contemptuously labelled it non-analytic. Kohut, deeply troubled, felt that he had been precise in his thinking and lamented the absence of serious scientific thought and non-contentious study on the part of some of his critics. His shift away from the traditional drive-processing mental apparatus psychology and toward a psychology concerned with the effects of the childhood selfobject milieu upon the formation ofthe self is one probable source of the intense antagonism. Taming the drives by expanding the domain of the ego is neither the goal of psychological development nor the definition of mental health, as Kohut understood it. For him, the goal of development and therefore the definition of emotional health is the establishment of an intact self, capable of maximally expressing one's innate talents and skills and creating a fulfilling life. As we have seen, Kohut presented this new pragmatic definition of health in The Restoration of the Self (1977), where he emphasized the enhanced functioning of an intact self over the complete resolution of conflict or control over drives. This new definition of health forces a redefinition of the goals of an analysis and a rethinking of the criteria for termination.
