This comprehensive, introductory text makes the concepts of self psychology accessible for students and clinicians. It begins with an overview of the development of Kohut's ideas, particularly those on narcissism and narcissistic development and explains the self object concept that is at the core of the self psychological vision of human experience. It also includes brief overviews, of the allied theoretical perspectives of intersubjectivity and motivational systems theory. Numerous clini...

The essential feature of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a picture of the trend to superiority, need for admiration, and lack of sensitivity to others. Individuals with narcissistic disorder have, for most of the time, a high self-regard. They routinely exaggerate their skills, often appearing arrogant. They think they're special, superior, have to be satisfied in every request.

While most psychotherapies agree that therapeutic work in the 'here and now' has the greatest power to bring about change, few if any books have ever addressed the problem of what 'here and now' actually means.Beginning with the claim that we are psychologically alive only in the now, internationally acclaimed child psychiatrist Daniel N. Stern tackles vexing yet fascinating questions such as: what is the nature of 'nowness'? How is 'now' experienced between two people? What do pre...

A uniquely practical guide and widely adopted text, this book shows precisely what therapists can say at key moments to enhance the process of healing and change. Paul Wachtel explains why some communications in therapy are particularly effective, while others that address essentially the same content may actually be countertherapeutic. He offers clear and specific guidelines for how to ask questions and make comments in ways that facilitate collaborative exploration and promote change. Il...

A trailblazing book on the theory of self-psychology from the one-time president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.In his foundational work The Restoration of the Self, noted psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut boldly challenges what he called "the limits of classical analytic theory" and the Freudian orthodoxy. Here Kohut proposes a "psychology of the self" as a theory in its own right—one that can stand beside the teachings of Freud and Jung.Using...

This important and innovative book explores a new direction in psychoanalytic thought that can expand and deepen clinical practice. Relational psychoanalysis diverges in key ways from the assumptions and practices that have traditionally characterized psychoanalysis. At the same time, it preserves, and even extends, the profound understanding of human experience and psychological conflict that has always been the strength of the psychoanalytic approach. Through probing theoretical analysis...

Building on the innovative work of Unformulated Experience, Donnel B. Stern continues his exploration of the creation of meaning in clinical psychoanalysis with Partners in Thought.The chapters in this fascinating book are undergirded by the concept that the meanings which arise from unformulated experience are catalyzed by the states of relatedness in which the meanings emerge. In hermeneutic terms, what takes place in the consulting room is a particular kind of ...

Ambitious and elegant, this book builds a bridge between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology. Michael Tomasello is one of the very few people to have done systematic research on the cognitive capacities of both nonhuman primates and human children. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition identifies what the differences are, and suggests where they might have come from.Tomasello argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture, and the kind of ps...

"Glickauf-Hughes and Wells present a clear and well-organized review of personality development according to object relations theorists. They offer an explanation and critique of each major theorist, note issues on which there is disagreement (along with areas of investigation not fully explored), and present implications for treatment. Concepts are well defined, and one gets the sense of a cohesive body of knowledge (possibly more cohesive than it actually is). Those unfamiliar with objec...

Early in these essays, Bromberg contemplates how one might engage schizoid detachment within an interpersonal perspective. To his surprise, he finds that the road to the patient's disavowed experiences most frequently passes through the analyst's internal conversation, as multiple configurations of self-other interaction, previously dissociated, are set loose first in the analyst and then played out in the interpersonal field.This insight leads to other discoveries. Beneath the dis...

In this important new book, the noted theoretician Fred Pine provides a synthesis of the four conceptual domains of psychoanalysis: drives, ego functioning, object relations, and self experience. He argues that a focus on the clinical phenomena themselves, and not on the theoretical edifices built around them, readily illuminates the inevitable integration of the several sets of phenomena in each person's unique psychological organization. With superb clarity, Pine shows how one or another...

In Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology: A Comprehensive Text, Frank Summers provides thorough, lucid, and critically informed accounts of the work of major object relations theorists: Fairbairn, Guntrip, Klein, Winnicott, Kernberg, and Kohut. His expositions achieve distinction on two counts. First, the work of each object relations theorist is presented as a comprehensive whole, with separate sections expounding the theorist's ideas and assumptions about metapsychology,...