How Roger Frie and Ilene Philipson Provide Context for Understanding Heinz Kohut: The Man and his Work

Abstract

In my review of this panel, I focus principally on the deep importance of Roger Frie and Ilene Philipson’s articles, both to the growth and expansion of self psychology as a perspective of great relevance to the field of psychoanalysis, and to our understanding of Heinz Kohut as a man and as a theorist. These articles are significant not only in and of themselves, then, but for their shared basic assumption concerning the central significance of the historic and the cultural as fundamental to the life and treatment of the individual. Not only does lived experience expand beyond the domains of the intrapsychic and the intersubjective to include the realms of culture and history, but, and this is the notable point made by these writers, neither the intrapsychic nor the intersubjective can be completely understood outside of their formative influence. I, then, seek to demonstrate how in taking into account these realms of culture and history, both the theory of self psychology and our understanding of Heinz Kohut as a person, are enlarged and made more meaningful.

Keywords:

• context
• embeddedness
• empathic listening
• self
• selfobject
• trauma