The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders » (Reprint)

Heinz Kohut (1913–81) was professorial lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Chicago and president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is the author of many books, including How Does Analysis Cure? and The Curve of Life, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Psychoanalyst, teacher, and scholar, Heinz Kohut was one of the twentieth century's most important intellectuals. A rebel according to many mainstream psychoanalysts, Kohut challenged Freudian orthodoxy and the medical control of psychoanalysis in America. In his highly influential book The Analysis of the Self, Kohut established the industry standard of the treatment of personality disorders for a generation of analysts. This volume, best known for its groundbreaking analysis of narcissism, is essential reading for scholars and practitioners seeking to understand human personality in its many incarnations.

“Kohut has done for narcissism what the novelist Charles Dickens did for poverty in the nineteenth century. Everyone always knew that both existed and were a problem. . . . The undoubted originality is to have put it together in a form which carries appeal to action.”—International Journal of Psychoanalysis

Acknowledgments

Preface

1. INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS

Part I

The Therapeutic Activation of the Omnipotent Object

2. THE IDEALIZING TRANSFERENCE

3. A CLINICAL ILLUSTRATION OF IDEALIZING TRANSFERENCE

4. CLINICAL AND THERAPEUTIC ASPECTS OF THE IDEALIZING TRANSFERENCE

The Idealizing Transference Distinguished from Mature Forms of Idealization Varieties of Idealizing Transference

The Process of Working Through and Other Clinical Problems in the Idealizing Transference

Part II

The Therapeutic Activation of the Grandiose Self

5. TYPES OF MIRROR TRANSFERENCES: A CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO DEVELOPMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS

The Merger Through the Extension of the Grandiose Self

The Alter-Ego Transference or Twinship

The Mirror Transference in the Narrower Sense

Clinical Examples

6. TYPES OF MIRROR TRANSFERENCES: A CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO GENETIC-DYNAMIC CONSIDERATIONS

The Primary Mirror Transference

The Reactive Mobilization of the Grandiose Self

The Secondary Mirror Transference

7. THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS IN THE MIRROR TRANSFERENCES

Acting Out in the Narcissistic Transferences: The Problem of Therapeutic Activism

The Goals of the Working-Through Process Concerning the Activated Grandiose Self

The Functions of the Analyst in the Analysis of the Mirror Transference

The Significance of the Mirror Transference as the Instrumentality of the Working-Through Process

General Remarks about the Mechanisms Which Bring about Therapeutic Progress in Psychoanalysis

Part III

Clinical and Technical Problems in the Narcissistic Transferences

8. GENERAL REMARKS ABOUT NARCISSISTIC TRANSFERENCES

Theoretical Considerations

Clinical Considerations

Traumatic States

9. CLINICAL ILLUSTRATION OF THE NARCISSISTIC TRANSFERENCES

10. SOME REACTIONS OF THE ANALYST TO THE IDEALIZING TRANSFERENCE

11. SOME REACTIONS OF THE ANALYST TO THE MIRROR TRANSFERENCES

12. SOME THERAPEUTIC TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE ANALYSIS OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITIES

Increase and Expansion of Object Love

Progressive and Integrative Developments within the Narcissistic Realm

Empathy

Creativeness

Humor and Wisdom

Bibliography

Concordance of Cases

Index