Psychopathology

Abstract

Ontogenetically, the self is formed in the matrix of the child’s selfobject environment (in a process of ‘transmuting internalization’) (Kohut & Wolf, 1978). The ‘nuclear self’ of the child crystallizes in this matrix if his mirroring and idealizing needs are realistically gratified by his selfobjects, and if the child is also exposed to minor, nontraumatic failures of the responses of his selfobjects. If the child’s mirroring and idealizing needs are not responded to sufficiently, a stable structure of the self cannot emerge; the child’s dependence on his selfobjects cannot be replaced by functions that are normally adopted by the self as it matures (i.e., by endopsychic self-esteem-regulating structures). Persistent failure of the parents to respond to the child’s existence and assertiveness with effective mirroring can cause lasting enfeeblement of the self. Persistent failure of the parents to allow the child to experience merger with one of them acting as an idealized object, too, has this effect (Kohut & Wolf, 1978).

The understimulation due to parental remoteness that is a pathogenic factor in disorders of the self is a manifestation of a disorder of the self in the parent. In many instances, the parents of those who suffer from disorders of the self are quite manifestly walled off from their children, and it is thus easy to see that they deprive them of empathic mirroring and of a responsive target for their idealizing need.

(Kohut, 1977, p. 274)