ABSTRACT
This chapter traces and elucidates the development of Heinz Kohut’s theory of normal and pathological narcissism. The expansion and modification of these ideas by later self psychology are also discussed in detail.
The review of Kohut’s theory emphasizes the arrest of early narcissism at the need for mirroring or idealization. In the analysis these early needs are mobilized, and the analyst responds with an “optimal level of frustration.” The analysis will be successful to the degree that the analyst can be empathic without gratifying the early needs.
In Kohut’s last work, he abandoned his previous stance that his contribution was the development of a technique for analyzing narcissistic pathology while the neurotic patient remained accessible by the classical technique. Now, at the end of his career, Kohut proposed that his self psychologically informed theory and technique were applicable to all patients.
The extensive contributions of post-Kohutian self psychologists are discussed and elaborated here. Self psychologists such as Arnold Goldberg, Howard Bacall, Marianne Tolpin, Frank Lachman and Beatrice Beebe, Anna and Paul Ornstein, and many others are elucidated to show the current state of the theory and practice of self psychology.
