From a Cohesive Self to a Relational Being: The Evolution of the Psychology of the Self to the Psychology of Being Human

ABSTRACT

The twinship/alter-ego experience, defined as a sense of being human among other human beings, is one of the most significant concepts of Heinz Kohut’s Psychology of the Self. Throughout his work, Kohut always referred to both the twinship and alter-ego terms interchangeably, but he never clarified his use of the two very different concepts to encompass one idea. In this article, we attempt to clarify this by exploring how the twinship experience and the alter-ego experience do, or do not, come into contact with each other. Through a reexamination of a case vignette about Anna, who we have discussed elsewhere, we illustrate that the twinship experience is an intersubjective process which involves both the significance of the way in which two people came to meet each other and how they have experienced being together, while the alter-ego experience is about a human dialogue between different facets within a person, and between different people, both of which emerge in the traumatic world that people existentially share with, and hide from themselves and each other. We conclude with an assertion that a “sense of being human” emerges in a space where these two very different, but related experiences encounter, and engage with each other in a “complex relational dance” (Suchorov, personal communication).

KEYWORDS:

• Twinship experience
• alter-ego experience
• psychology of the self
• psychology of being human
• I-Thou relationship
• multiple self states
• human dialogue
• coming-into-being
• going-on-being-with

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ We thank Max Suchorov for this idea which arose on reading Kottler (2018).

² See the same case vignette first discussed in Togashi and Kottler (2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Koichi Togashi

Koichi Togashi, Ph.D., L.P., is a Faculty and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Training and Research in Intersubjective Self Psychology, New York; a Professor at Konan University, Kobe, Japan; and is in private practice in Hiroshima and Kobe, Japan. He is a Council Member of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, and an International Editor of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context. He has published numerous books and articles in the United States, Japan, and Taiwan. He authored the book, The Psychoanalytic Zero: A Decolonizing Study of Therapeutic Dialogues, published by Routledge in 2020.

Amanda Kottler

Amanda Kottler, M.A. (Clin. Psych.), a clinical psychologist, practices as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a founding member of the Cape Town Psychoanalytic Self Psychology Group and an Emeritus Council Member of the International Association of Psychanalytic Self Psychology. Previously a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town, she now works full time in private practice. She has published widely, co-edited two books, and is the coauthor of Kohut’s Twinship across Cultures: The Psychology of Being Human, published by Routledge in 2015.