Selfobject Psychology for a Troubled World

ABSTRACT

The role of self-psychology in establishing a transformational humanity and even in saving the continued existence of our world—is a very modest one, yet, at the same time, a uniquely crucial opportunity. We, as a community committed to psychoanalytic self-psychology, are being required to respond to the summons of a serving leadership. The task ahead of us all is not less than that of creating a supra-contextual web of empathy that will embrace the personal and the general, the similar and the different, the multiplicity and the oneness. Only such an ethical matrix of universalism will constitute a total solidarity. Such an immeasurable task calls upon us to uplift the Kohutian legacy to its final destination, to the shores of selfobject psychology. This proposal aims at refining self-psychology into a psychology of transformation, defining the humane narcissistic journey from self-cherishing attitude to other-cherishing attitude, and, perhaps even beyond, to a stance of all-embracing ethical commitment to the realization of awakened awareness. Selfobject psychology thus opens up for psychoanalysis a spiritual horizon that will buttress the unceasing quest for the tremendous goal of withstanding our troubled times and of securing a future for humankind and its cosmic habitat.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychoanalysis – republic of spirit
• psychology of oneness
• selfobject psychology
• selfobjecting – psychoanalytic substitution
• ultimate solidarity
• serving leadership