An Advanced Workshop in Relational Self Psychology
Can listening, talking, & doing all be equally curative?
Do you believe empathy is vitally therapeutic?
Join us for an in-depth exploration of Heinz Kohut’s legacy in the Post-Modern Era
Favorite Quotes from Kohut & Some of Our Own Process
"If there is one lesson that I have learned during my life as an analyst, it is the lesson that what my patients tell me is likely to be true - that many times when I believed that I was right and my patients were wrong, it turned out, though often only after a prolonged search, that my rightness was superficial whereas their rightness was profound." (pp. 93-94)
By Heinz Kohut from (1984), How Does Analysis Cure?. Ed. A. Goldberg & P. Stepansky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
"Self psychology sees man as born strong, not weak, because it takes account of the fact that he is born into the psychological matrix of responsive selfobjects, just as he is born into the physiological matrix of an atmosphere that contains oxygen. To examine the baby psychologically in isolation from the selfobjects (who indeed are a part of him and of whom he is a part, from the beginning) would be just as absurd as it would be to examine it physiologically in a vacuum, i.e., without oxygen (which indeed is simultaneously 'inside' and 'outside' of him physically, as are the selfobjects simultaneously 'inside' and 'outside' of him psychologically). Being reflected by the selfobjects (mirroring), being able to merge with their calmness and power (idealization), sensing the silent presence of their essential alikeness (twinship), the baby is strong, healthy, and vigorous." (p.478 )
By Heinz Kohut from (1979), The Search for the Self: Volume 4.,Chpt. 14, Remarks on the Panel on "The Bipolar Self". Ed. P. Ornstein. Connecticut: International Universities Press, Inc.
Les & his patient
LL: One of the things that feels a little better is ordering me around.
PT: Yeah. It doesn't seem like I can order anyone else around. I can't even really order myself around.
[Patient talks about his desire to disentangle himself from his girlfriend.]
LL: You want someone to be saying no more girls. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll go along with it.
PT: No, I really want someone to say it and make it stick.
LL: It doesn't seem like there's a way I could do that, short of having you move in with me.
PT: [despondent]— I don't think your wife would like it very much.
LL: Is that the only thing you see getting in the way of the plan?
PT: No. [animated] I sort of wanted you to move in with me.
LL: [chuckles]—My wife would like that better?
PT: No. But then you would have to deal with that and not me. [animated and engaged] Pretty funny. Huh?
Shawn & his patient
She spoke bitterly of her experience of herself in that moment of tension in our early relationship: “It’s like I’m nothing more than a project, that’s what it feels like, like I’m not really even human anymore, just a thing, two-dimensional, flat, maybe like some kind of bug or something...”.
Me in response: “It feels like I’ve abandoned you there, because your able to be abandoned,... I’ve left you feeling like you’re not fit company for another human, that your just thing-like, something for me to study, but not really be in relationship with...”.
She: “That’s exactly what the feeling is like, but now you don’t seem so far away, it feels like you’re here with me again, closer, not holding back, not studying me...”.
My response, “I’m sorry, before I thought and felt I was here with you but I was quiet, ... trying to listen hard to understand your experience, instead I’ve hurt you, left you feeling like an alien.”
She: “Its’ such a familiar place, I hate it... I feel like that all the time with [...], I can’t feel it here with you as well... not feeling like that here is the only thing I have...”.
