Contemporary Self Psychology

Self Psychology evolves in ongoing exploration with thinkers from a variety of disciplines. The result is a welcoming globally inclusive perspective that is both scientifically sound and artful in its impactful, clinical application.

Constantly Enriching What We Consider, Engage and Explore

Fundamental to the evolution of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology is an appreciation for the socio-cultural, historical, developmental, and relational contexts in which we are always inextricably embedded.

We invite you to explore the following perspectives. Each brings a different emphasis that may be woven into one’s personal theory and clinical approach. Additional perspectives will evolve.

Complexity / Nonlinear Dynamic Systems

Complexity is about how systems change and seek stability. Human development, like all change, is understood as the emergence of something new out of the intertwining of many components. Development that is atypical—what some call pathology—is appreciated as an unexpected path, emerging out of complex interactions that cannot be attributed to a single cause. Individual and context are inextricably entwined. “It is not possible to say what directly causes what, because the whole system is so mutually embedded and interdependent” (Thelen, 2005).

“The therapeutic relationship is not solely a means of working something through or resolving conflict but can more profitably be understood as being an essential source of expansion of an individual’s experiential world, in concert with one’s history, one’s current state of mind, and one’s environment, variously defined” (Coburn, 2014).

Infant Research

Infant research’s primary contribution is that an infant is born with relational capacities which organize their experience in interactions. Empirical findings lead us to recognize the ongoing co-creative processes of the analytic relationship such as: ongoing self and interactive regulation, rupture and repair, heighted affective moments, and implicit relational knowing. These concepts enhance the analyst’s understanding of how transformation takes place through the bi-directional, affective engagement between analyst and patient. “At every (clinical) moment there is the potential to (re-) organize (or not reorganize) expectations of intimacy, trust, mutuality, repair of disruptions, as well as to disconfirm (or not disconfirm) rigid archaic expectations” (Beebe & Lachmann, 2003).

Intersubjective Systems

This theory raises the question of how one’s subjective experience organizes their perception of self, other, and self with other. It asserts that each person is inextricably embedded in a cocreated engagement with others, in which each influences and is influenced by the other. Accordingly, a person’s mind cannot be isolated from its relational context. Notions of reality are redefined, and how each individual creates meaning is elaborated.

“Once an analyst has grasped the idea that his responsiveness can be experienced subjectively as a vital, functional component of a patient’s self- organization, he will never listen to analytic material in quite the same way” Stolorow, Brandchaft and Atwood (1987).

Motivational Systems

This theory provides an expanded understanding of motivation formulated from the empirical findings of infant research. It elaborates how behavior is driven by seven innate motivational systems, a marked departure from Freud’s dual drive theory. Lichtenberg, Lachmann & Fosshage delineate clear and helpful guidelines for clinical engagement including listening perspectives, model scenes and wearing the patient’s attributions.

“Motivation is not a monolithic force but a repertoire of systems, each contributing to development and behavior in ways shaped by relationships and context” (Lichtenberg, 2001).

Contributions from Philosophy

Concepts of phenomenology, from Husserl to Heidegger, have been woven into self psychology by Stolorow, Atwood & Orange. Their phenomenological emphasis on subjective experience and the meaning of Being, leads the analyst to understand the patient’s being-in-the world as it is lived and experienced. Further, Orange emphasized Levinas’ ethics of responsibility to the Other, calling upon the analyst to be ethically responsive to the patient, and elaborating “intersubjective vulnerability” between patient and analyst.

Somatic Theories

Focusing on embodiment, somatic theories detail the embodied aspects of therapist and patient, and view the therapeutic process in terms of “talking bodies” (Brothers & Sletvold, 2023) in order to helpfully access traumatic experience.

Somatic Intersubjective Self Psychology, developed by Lauffenburger in Australia, expands Kohut’s self-selfobject system into the embodied domain, recognizing that embodied relational rhythms co-create meaning, and attention to these rhythms can further empathic responsiveness.

"Human Spirit"

Formulating a psychoanalytic-Buddhist framework, while grounded within the traditions of self psychology, “Human Spirit” theory, founded by Raanan Kulka, conceives of and refines a “spiritual dimension ingrained in self psychology and its application to the political field and the unsolved riddle of leadership” (Kulka, 2022). This theory is applied
to the clinical, the political, and our search for peace.

Relational Self Psychology

Originally an amalgam of Interpersonal and Object Relations theories, Relational psychoanalysis evolved in light of infant research and theories of intersubjectivity to include some of the tenets of self psychology. Yet it maintains a focus on the patient’s recognition of the analyst’s subjectivity, on enactments in treatment, and dissociation.
Some theorists who integrate self and relational theory, such as Magid, Fosshage & Shane (2021), refer to themselves as Relational Self Psychologists.
“The analyst must be willing to risk being changed by the patient, to allow the therapeutic process to be a two-way street where both participants are engaged in a journey of discovery and growth” (Slavin, 2016).

Classical Self Psychology

Kohut recognized that narcissistic personalities are treatable. By providing selfobject functions of mirroring, twinship, and idealization, narcissistic preoccupations can be transformed into empathy, creativity, a sense of humor, wisdom, and an appreciation for transience. Kohut defined empathy as a listening perspective.

"If there is one lesson that I have learned during my life as an analyst, it is the lesson that what my patients tell me is likely to be true - that many times when I believed that I was right and my patients were wrong, it turned out, though often only after a prolonged search, that my rightness was superficial whereas their rightness was profound" (Kohut, 1971).

Contemporary Self Psychology

Constantly Enriching What We Consider, Engage and Explore

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