ABSTRACT
The concept of self-esteem has captured the attention of a good number of contemporary theoreticians. Among contemporary psychodynamic authors, the work of N. McWilliams , S. M. Johnson, G. Gabbard, as well as J. G. Gunderson and K. A. Phillips, offers a useful developmental point of view based on H. Kohut’s or O. Kernberg’s ideas. The problem of self-esteem is necessarily interwoven into the therapeutic process by the incontrovertible fact that all psychotherapy rests on the dynamics linked to self-esteem or narcissism. Pathological narcissism is the defensive elaboration of grandiosity in response to poor self-esteem. In addition to good self-esteem, a confidant and empathic disposition towards the other is discernable, yet matched by a capacity to defend against the possibility of attack by the other. People with either interrupted or perverted narcissistic development tend to have poor self-esteem. In the development of his self-esteem, the child needs to follow his own ambition without shaping himself to fit a parent’s ambition.
