Progress in Self Psychology, V. 14

Volume 14 of Progress in 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 In this volume, "From the Kohut Archives" features a selection of previously unpublished Kohut correspondence from the 1940s through the 1970s.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, " "Selfobject and Objects, " and "Schizoid and Psychotic Patients." As Howard 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 (Brothers, Kaufman) and a critical examination of"Kohut, Loewald, and the Postmoderns" (Teicholz), Volume 14 reaffirms the position of self psychology at the forefront of clinical, developmental, and conceptual advance.