Analysis of the Self: Systematic Approach to Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders

Rating:
Summary: Dixit Magister
Review: Despite being identified with an idiosyncratic approach to the concept of self - known as Self Psychology - Kohut shapes our modern understanding of narcissism, both healthy and pathological.

He said that pathological narcissism is not the result of excessive narcissism, libido or aggression.

It is the result of defective, deformed or incomplete narcissistic (self) structures. Kohut postulated the existence of core constructs which he named: the Grandiose Exhibitionistic Self and the Idealized Parent Imago (see below). Children entertain notions of greatness (primitive or naive grandiosity) mingled with magical thinking, feelings of omnipotence and omniscience and a belief in their immunity to the consequences of their actions. These elements and the child's feelings regarding its parents (which are also painted by it with a brush of omnipotence and grandiosity) - coagulate and form these constructs.

The child's feelings towards its parents are reactions to their responses (affirmation, buffering, modulation or disapproval, punisment, even abuse).

These responses help maintain the self-structures. Without the appropriate responses, grandiosity, for instance, cannot be transformed into adult ambitions and ideals.

To Kohut, grandiosity and idealization were positive childhood development mechanisms. Even their reappearance in transference should not be considered a pathological narcissistic regression. am Vaknin, author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited".

Rating:
Summary: A true masterpiece
Review: I can't believe I am the first person to review this book. This is one of the best books ever written on self development and it's pathological side: narcissistic disorders.

Kohut was so technical in his writting that perhaps it can be quite hard for beginners to "get" all the consequences that can be extracted from it's reading.

Kohut was lucid, had a great human understanding and never confined his thinking to the realms of the already accepted psychoanalitic truths.

It's a demanding book but worth reading!