Abstract
From the beginning, my introduction to self psychology was steeped in questions related to race, gender, and sexuality. The Center for Religion and Psychotherapy of Chicago, where I trained, offered a program specializing in the work of Heinz Kohut and the theory he developed, known as self psychology. I was struck by and drawn to what many thought of as Kohut’s radical and necessary shift from Freud’s classical drive model postulating that humanity is primarily motivated by innate sexual and aggressive instincts. Kohut stressed innate developmental needs that we turn to others to meet. The shift from drives leading our way into relationship to needs ultimately produced a view of the person where self-ness emerged out of the experience of satisfaction of crucial needs throughout life. We immediately see that Kohut recognized the importance of early developmental environment, the related needs, and advocated the lifelong need for others—as opposed to a developmental trajectory always toward a radical independence. The aspect of his work that I have found most compelling is where he links culture and self-experience. We will expand these ideas later in the chapter, but I think the following vignette can help us see why a psychoanalytic view of the relationship between culture and self is crucial.
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Notes
Malcolm Pines, “The Self as a Group, The Group as a Self,” in Self Experiences in Group: Intersubjective and Self Psychological Pathways to Human Understanding, ed. Irene N.H. Harwood and Malcolm Pines (London; Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998), 24–29, 25, 26, 27.
Heinz Kohut and Ernest S. Wolf, “The Disorders of the Self and Their Treatment: An Outline,” in Essential Papers on Narcissism, ed. Andrew P. Morrison (New York: New York University Press, 1986), 177.
Esther Menaker, The Freedom to Inquire: Self Psychological Perspectives on Women’s Issues, Masochism, and the Therapeutic Relationship (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc, 1995), 45.
Heinz Kohut, Self Psychology and the Humanities: Reflections on a New Psychoanalytic Approach, ed. Charles B. Strozier (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 84.
Mark Gehrie, “The Self and the Group: A Tentative Exploration in Applied Self Psychology,” in Advances in Self Psychology, ed. Arnold Goldberg (New York: International Universities Press, 1985).
Karen Seeley, Cultural Psychotherapy: Working with Culture in the Clinical Encounter (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc, 2000), 56–57.
Judith Teichholz, Kohut, Loewald, and the Postmoderns (Hillside, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1999), 6.
Pines, Malcolm, “The Self as a Group, The Group as a Self,” in Self Experiences in Group: Intersubjective and Self Psychological Pathways, ed. Irene N.H. Harwood and Malcolm Pines (Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publications, 1998), 98.
Heinz Kohut, “The Two Analyses of Mr. Z,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 60 (1979): 3–27.
See also Charles Strozier, “Heinz Kohut and ‘The Two Analyses of Mr. Z’: The Use (and Abuse?) Of Case Material in Psychoanalysis,” The Psychoanalytic Review 86 (1999): 569–586.
Charles B. Strozier, Heinz Kohut: The Making of A Psychoanalyst (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001).
Constance Goldberg, “A Personal and Professional Reminiscence of Heinz Kohut,” Progress in Self Psychology: Explorations in Self Psychology, Vol. 19, ed. Mark J. Gehris (New York: Routledge, 2003): 347–358.
Anna Ornstein, “Trauma, Memory and Psychic Continuity,” in Progress in Self Psychology: A Decade of Progress, Vol. 10, ed. Arnold Goldberg (New York: Routledge, 1994), 131–146, 132.
Ernest S. Wolf, “Selfobject Experiences: Development, Psychopathology, Treatment,” Mahler and Kohut: Perspectives on Development, Psychopathology, and Treatment, ed. Selma Kramer and Salman Akhtar (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc, 1994), 72.
Ernest S. Wolf, Treating The Self (New York: The Guilford Press, 1988), 55.
Miriam Elson, Self Psychology in Clinical Social Work (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986).
Ernest S. Wolf, Treating The Self (New York: The Guilford Press, 1988), 55.
Robinson, Tracy and Janie Victoria Ward, “A Belief in Self Far Greater Than Anyone’s Disbelief: Cultivating Resistance Among African American Female Adolescents,” in Girls, Women and Psychotherapy: Reframing Resistance, ed. Carol Gilligan, Annie G. Rogers, and Deborah L. Tolman (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 1991), 87–103, 88–89.
Also see Patricia Hill Collings, “The Meaning of Motherhood in Black Cultures and Black Mother-Daughter Relationships,” Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women 4, 2 (1987) 4–11.
Suzanne Carother, “Catching Sense: Learning from our Mothers to be Black and Female,” in Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture, ed. Faye Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1990), 232–247.
See Mark Gehrie, “The Self and the Group: A Tentative Exploration in Applied Self Psychology,” in Advances in Self Psychology, ed. Arnold Goldberg (New York: International Universities Press, 1985).
Sheppard, “Psychoanalysis, Race, and Culture: Compromised Selfobject Experiences and the Need for Mourning,” unpublished presentation, 2009.
Lang, Joan, “Notes toward a Psychology of the Feminine Self,” in Kohut’s Legacy: Contributions To Self Psychology, ed. Paul E. Stepansky and Arnold Goldberg (Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1984);
see also Menaker, Esther, The Freedom to Inquire: Self Psychological Perspectives on Women’s Issues, Masochism and the Therapeutic Relationship (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc, 1995), 87;
Gardiner, Judith Kegan, “Self Psychology As Feminist Theory,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12, 4 (Summer 1987): 761–780
Pangerl, Susan, “Self Psychology: A Feminist Revisioning,” in Progress in Self Psychology, Vol. 12, ed. Arnold Goldberg (Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1996);
Rector, Lallene, “The Function of Early Selfobject Experience in Gendered Representations of God,” in Progress in Self Psychology, Vol. 12, ed. Arnold Goldberg (Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1996).
Esther Menaker, The Freedom to Inquire: Self Psychological Perspectives on Women’s Issues, Masochism and the Therapeutic Relationship (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc, 1995), 87.
Beverly Greene and Leslie C. Jackson, Psychotherapy with African American Women: Innovations in Psychodynamic Perspectives and Practice (New York: The Guilford Press, 2000), xvii.
Lillian Comas-Diaz and Beverly Greene, “African American Women,” in Women of Color: Integrating Ethnic and Gender Identities in Psychotherapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), 10.
Sheppard, “Psychoanalysis, Race and Culture: Compromised Selfobjects Experiences and the Need for Mourning,” unpublished presentation, 1997.
Frances K. Trotman, “Feminist and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy with African American Women: Some Differences,” Psychotherapy with African American Women: Innovations in Psychodynamic Perspectives and Practice, ed. Leslie Jackson and Beverly Green (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 253.
Jessica Henderson Daniel, “The Courage to Hear: African American Women’s Memories of Racial Trauma,” Psychotherapy with African American Women: Innovations in Psychodynamic Perspectives and Practice, ed. Leslie Jackson and Beverly Green (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 126.
bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999), 227.
Emilie M. Townes, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 145.
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© 2011 Phillis Isabella Sheppard
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Sheppard, P.I. (2011). Black Women and Self Psychology: Toward a Usable Dialogue. In: Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology. Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118027_6
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