A Critical Appraisal of Stolorow’s Criticism of Kohut’s Concept of the Self and His Contextualization of Heidegger’s Notion of Authenticity plus the Possibility of an Intersubjective Self Psychology

ABSTRACT

In this paper I want to contest claims made by Robert Stolorow that Kohut’s notion of the self is a reified concept that seriously distorts our understanding of human experience, that his own theory of phenomenological contextualism is an adequate way to explore the psychological depths of human subjectivity, and that Heidegger’s theory of authentic individuality can be adequately translated into his intersubjective contextualism. My aim is to salvage the notion of self and authentic individuality from collapsing into what I see as an overzealous contextualism, establish the importance of doing theory that explores psychological and metaphysical structures underlying experience, and show how self psychology and intersubjectivity theory might be fused into a comprehensive way to investigate the human psyche. It is the dialectical tension between being an independent center of initiative and perception and being thoroughly contextualized that is the truth of the self and I believe that this is Kohut’s basic position.

KEYWORDS:

• Stolorow
• phenomenological contextualism
• self psychology
• intersubjectivity
• Heidegger
• Kohut

Notes

¹ See August Baker’s article “A Defense of Kohut’s 'Self'” in PSC, vol. 16, #1, pp. 85-93 for an excellent critique of Stolorow’s claim that the self is a reified notion.

² As a fellow philosopher who has been deeply affected by Heidegger’s work, especially Being and Time, let me say that Stolorow’s account of Heidegger’s philosophy, especially in his World, Affectivity, and Trauma, is accurate, concise, and thoroughly impressive. Being and Time is a difficult, dense book and Stolorow explicates it beautifully.

³ This paragraph closely follows Stolorow’s account of Heidegger in Chapter 4 of his World, Affectivity, Trauma (2011).

⁴ I probe these questions and attempt to develop a new metapsychology in chapter 4 of Why It Is Good to Be Good and chapter 3 of Exploring the Life of the Soul.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Hanwell Riker

John Riker, Ph.D., for the past three decades has been devoted to exploring the relation of psychoanalysis, especially Kohutian self psychology, to ethics and philosophical anthropology. He has written four books intersecting psychoanalysis and ethics (most recently,Exploring the Life of the Soul), and published numerous articles and spoken in many international conferences on this material.  John has been a professor of philosophy at Colorado College for over half a century and been named Professor of the Year a record four times, and advisor of the year a record three times. He was the initial recipient of the award Colorado College established to recognize someone who most promotes diversity and inclusion on campus. He was the Kohut Distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago in 2003. He and his spouse, Marcia Dobson, established The Dobson/Riker Professorship for Psychoanalysis, Self, and Creativity at Colorado College, a unique professorship in American academia.