The Self and the Other: Hegel, Kohut, and the Psychology of Othering

ABSTRACT

In this article I inquire into why humans have such devastatingly difficult problems relating to difference by elaborating Hegel’s claim that the structure of self-consciousness leads toward domination/submission interactions and showing how Kohut’s articulation of narcissistic needs reveals a fundamental desire for locating oneself in communities of sameness. I then discuss why the Enlightenment’s strategy of finding a universal commonality among humans is both important in solving the problem but also fails to recognize the genuine difference that difference makes. I conclude by showing how self psychology’s emphasis on empathy as the primary predisposition for engagement with others is crucial in solving the problem of alterity and why it is that persons must engage with difference if they are to sustain the vibrancy of their selves.

KEYWORDS:

• Difference
• Hegel
• Kohut
• narcissistic needs
• self-consciousness
• empathy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ See Plato’s Phaedo for a brilliant portrayal of this struggle.

² Jessica Benjamin takes Hegel’s insight about the need both to recognize and be recognized by an other free, unmanipulated human being to be essential for human growth and brings this insight to psychoanalysis, transforming its understandings of human relationships. See especially her Bonds of Love (1988).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Hanwell Riker

John Hanwell Riker, Ph.D., has been a professor of philosophy at Colorado College for over half a century where he has been named Professor of the Year a record four times, advisor of the year a record three times, and was the initial recipient of the award that recognizes someone who most promotes diversity and inclusion on campus. He has written four books intersecting psychoanalysis and ethics, including the recent Why It Is Good to Be Good: Ethics, Kohut’s Self Psychology and Modern Society and Exploring the Life of the Soul: Philosophical Reflections on Psychoanalysis and Self Psychology.