Progress in Self Psychology, V. 14

Volume 14 of Progress in Self Psychology, The World of Self Psychology, introduces a valuable new section to the series: publication of noteworthy material from the Kohut Archives of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.  In this volume, “From the Kohut Archives” features a selection of previously unpublished Kohut correspondence from the 1940s through the 1970s.  The clinical papers that follow are divided into sections dealing with “Transference and Countertransference,” “Selfobjects and Objects,” and ” Schizoid and Psychotic Patients.”  As Howad Bacal explains in his introduction, these papers bear witness to the way in which self psychology has increasingly become a relational self psychology – a psychology of the individual’s experience in the context of relatedness.  Coburn’s reconstrual of “countertransference” as an experience of self-injury in the wake of unresponsiveness to the analyst’s own selfobject needs; Livingston’s demonstration of the ways in which dreams can be used to facilitate “a playful and metaphorical communication between analyst and patient”; Gorney’s examination of twinship experience as a fundamental goal of analytic technique; and Lenoff’s emphasis on the relational aspects of “phantasy selfobject experience” are among the highlights of the collection.  Enlarged by contemporary perspectives on gender and self-experience and a critical examination of “Kohut, Loewald, and the Postmoderns,” Volume 14 reaffirms the position of self psychology at the forefront of clinical, developmental, and conceptual advance.