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 In this volume, &quote;From the Kohut Archives&quote; features a selection of previously unpublished Kohut correspondence from the 1940s through the 1970s.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 &quote;Transference and Countertransference,&quote; &quote;Selfobjects and Objects,&quote; and &quote; Schizoid and Psychotic Patients.&quote; 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 &quote;countertransference&quote; 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 &quote;a playful and metaphorical communication between analyst and patient&quote;; Gorney's examination of twinship experience as a fundamental goal of analytic technique; and Lenoff's emphasis on the relational aspects of &quote;phantasy selfobject experience&quote; are among the highlights of the collection. Enlarged by contemporary perspectives on gender and self-experience and a critical examination of &quote;Kohut, Loewald, and the Postmoderns,&quote; Volume 14 reaffirms the position of self psychology at the forefront of clinical, developmental, and conceptual advance.