Kohut: An Overview

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Heinz Kohut's concept of self-object relationships, which he deems the organizing center of the human personality. The paper details Kohut's basic psychological constituents of personality in terms of the psychic structures and the mental functions and processes that promote the development of the self.

From the Paper:

"According to Kohut, individuals are born without a self, but exist in a state of Primary Narcissism. This state is an experience of perfect, blissful, self-love achieved by the infant's sense of cohesion and self-esteem. While in infancy, nuclear self develops. Patton (1980) describes this self as a "fragile organization of schemata which subsumes certain mental objects, innate aims, and action promoting tendencies." This fragile organization is described by Kohut as the "bi-polar self" with the grandiose self and the idealizing self at opposite ends connected by a tension gradient or arc."

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