Kohut's Freudian Vision

Philip F. D. Rubovits-Seitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317713715
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Heinz Kohut was arguably the most influential modern day psychoanalyst. Because current interest in Kohut's work has focused so completely on self psychology, however, certain aspects of Kohut's thinking, in particular his nonreductive synthesis of Freudian theory, are in danger of being lost. Prior to his development of self psychology, Kohut was a legendary teacher of Freudian theory at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. In this volume, Philip Rubovits-Seitz presents Kohut's previously unavailable lectures from his course on psychoanalytic psychology (prepared in collaboration with Kohut himself) along with an illuminating summary statement on Freudian theory jointly written by Kohut and Rubovits-Seitz.Rubovits-Seitz continues with his own insightful analysis of Kohut's distinctive approach to Freudian theory. And he concludes by arguing persuasively why Kohut's later contributions should best be viewed as a continuation, rather than an abandonment, of this early vision. Kohut's Freudian Vision not only repairs an outstanding tear in received psychoanalytic history but also challenges self psychologists and contemporary Freudian psychoanalysts alike to renewed reflection.

Part I

KOHUT’S LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY

(1958–1960)

HEINZ KOHUT AND PHILIP F. D. SEITZ

Lecture 1

Three Periods in the Development of Psychoanalysis

This course is an introduction to the theories developed by Freud. Psychoanalytic theory is not a fixed body of knowledge, but has undergone continuous change. The course will not attempt to follow a strict chronological progression from the case of Anna O. to the latest papers in the International Journal. Instead, the theory will be discussed in large “chunks,” only more or less historically ordered. What is presented from the past will be colored by what we know now.

The first phase (approximately the first year of the course) covers from the beginning with Breuer and Anna O. up to around 1920, when Freud began writing a new set of papers: “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920); “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” (1921); “The Ego and the Id” (1923); and “Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety” (1926a). The second phase extended from 1920 to 1937, and the third phase, which is not covered by this course, extended from 1937 to the present. This course attempts to provide perspective on your assigned reading—that is, a pulling together and systematizing of what you will read.

The first period might be labelled with catchwords like “The Period of the Id,” “the Unconscious,” and “Infantile Sexuality,” but those terms do not really express what happened then. It is true that the main interest at that time was on the overwhelmingly new experiences of the Unconscious—forces within a person that he or she knows nothing about but which impel the person to behave in certain ways. Very soon, however, Freud came to see the Unconscious as the remnant of infantile psychological life, infantile sexuality, and childhood drives.

The second period is the one we think of these days in connection with the structural point of view, characterized by the systems id, ego, superego, and external world. Separation of the first two phases is artificial, however, unless one thinks of the distinction in terms of emphasis at the two times. The concept of ego, for example, was well known to Freud as early as the 1890s but was not given much emphasis at that time. Freud concentrated instead on the more impressive discoveries of infantile strivings and how the latter persist in the adult. The writings in one period are predictive of what will be developed further in the later periods. Even concepts such as the neutralizing capacity of the ego and infantile and childhood experiences were anticipated in Freud’s early writings. During the second period, the different aspects of personality were considered more equal in importance.

Until 1920 Freud had focused on only one infantile drive: infantile sexuality. During the second period, drive psychology was expanded and enriched by further studies of infantile aggression and hostility. Freud knew about infantile aggression much earlier, of course; for example, he knew that the child’s oedipal strivings were not just sexual-libidinal appetites, but also included hostile-competitive death wishes. In “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” Freud (1920) first stated that remnants of infantile aggression and hostility are equally as important in the formation of adult neuroses as derivatives of infantile sexuality.

There is a logical sequence in Freud’s clinical interests and investigations. He started with hysteria, then turned to compulsion neurosis, next to melancholia, and finally to paranoia and schizophrenia. He seems to have worked from the surface downward—from the less to the more severe forms of psychopathology.

The third period might be headlined “The Period Of Ego Autonomy.” Originally the ego was thought of as arising from modifications of the id. In the third phase, the ego was (and is) thought of as a structure in its own right. In his 1937a paper, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable,” Freud noted that defenses could not be explained entirely on the basis of instinctual vicissitudes and infantile experiences. He concluded that there must be something more to personality development, and he suggested that in addition to the factors of native drive endowment and traumatic frustrations in infancy, the ego must be predisposed innately to certain lines of development.

At about the same time, Heinz Hartmann (1939) proposed his important theories of primary and secondary ego autonomy (Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation). With respect to secondary autonomy, certain acquisitions of the ego are reinforced during specific periods of infantile conflict. For example, how the child’s toilet training is managed will influence his later attitudes about orderliness. Through educational pressures, the child will learn to control his desire for immediate infantile pleasure in evacuation. Hartmann pointed out that even though an activity like orderliness may have originated in conflict, it may in the course of further development separate itself from the conflict and become secondarily autonomous—that is, no longer a defense but an “autonomous ego function.”

The extreme of orderliness is compulsive orderliness, which suggests considerable distance between the infantile wish and the adult behavior, but some remnant of the infantile drive must still be present and active, making it necessary for the ego to clamp down on itself to avoid any temptation to smear. Clinical observation reveals that the intensity of the compusiveness waxes and wanes with the amount of anal-sadistic drive stimulation.

When Hartmann refers to secondary autonomy he speaks from the further clinical observation that even some of the most effective and adaptive adult activities may be traced to a time when infantile precursors of such behavior were intensely conflicted. Scientific activity in adulthood, for example, may have origins in frustration of childhood curiosity and looking. Freud’s scientific genius for mastering puzzling problems may have developed in part from traumatic puzzlement about the very different ages of family members in his childhood environment. No autonomy is irreversible, however. An analyst’s infantile sexual curiosity, which may play a part in his wanting to know and understand what goes on in patients, is usually autonomous. At times, however, it can lose its autonomy and become reconnected with infantile conflicts. When that happens, blind spots occur.

Both drive development and the innate maturational capacities of the ego influence what the ego eventually becomes. There are optimal times when the ego is ready for specific maturational advances, which Hartmann conceptualized as primary ego autonomy. Thus the development of the ego may be viewed from the standpoint of the ego itself. Conflicts of traumatic intensity may occur as a result of experiences that are incompatible with the innate maturational timetable of the autonomous ego.

Lecture 2

How It All Began

This year of the course is devoted mainly to the first phase in the development of psychoanalysis, up to the introduction of the structural point of view. Chapter 7 of Freud’s (1900) book on dreams will be reviewed, probably in the third quarter. Before then, read thoroughly chapters 1 through 6 of the dream book. The other reading assignment is the best survey of the first period, Freud’s “Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis” (1915–1916 and 1916–1917)—a difficult and profound book, requiring very close study, especially the third part (1916–1917) on psychopathology.

Psychoanalysis began with a patient who could be considered the true inventor of this method for studying the mind, Anna O. Her contribution was that she wanted to talk about her suffering and wanted someone to listen. She was a social worker, and despite the various attempts to prove that all of the early psychoanalytic patients were seriously disturbed and schizophrenic, there is no evidence of that in the case of Anna O. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim. Her psychological suffering was mainly hysterical—for example, dissociated states and unreal dream experiences.

Anna O.’s wish to talk about her problems found a willing ear in the Viennese internist Joseph Breuer. She was very literate and spoke English, and so did Breuer, so they conducted the treatment in English. Using a foreign language may have been an important factor in the treatment, by diluting some of the intensity of the experience for both patient and doctor. Anna O. invented the term chimney sweeping for her free associations. Her treatment went on for over a year and came to naught, but it was recorded and demonstrated the complication of transference.

A number of years passed before Breuer’s experience with Anna O. came to the attention of Sigmund Freud, who used it as the basis for developing psychoanalysis—not only as a method of observation, but as a set of abstractions from those observations. A cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory ever since Anna O.’s notion of chimney sweeping has been the concept of something that could be “swept out”—some “dark, dirty” material which, if removed, would improve matters, unclog them, free them up. This concept in psychoanalysis follows the surgical model for the treatment of abscess: Drain the abscess and gain relief of symptoms. We know now that Anna O. developed a transference neurosis, so that it became more important to her to see Breuer than to get relief of her symptoms. Mrs. Breuer sensed this, became jealous of Breuer’s prolonged treatment of Anna O., and insisted that the family take a long holiday in Italy.

Breuer’s early theory, based on the surgical model of draining an abscess, was a good theory; in Hartmann’s terms, it had optimal distance from the observed facts. It was not so close to the facts that it merely repeated them, and it was not so distant that clinical gusto was lost. A good theory has an optimal degree of generalization from the observed facts.

The notion of chimney sweeping became the concept of “catharsis” in Breuer and Freud’s (1893–1895) book, “Studies on Hysteria.” At first it was thought that the “abscess” consisted of ideas, but it soon became clear to Freud that the ideas must be charged—or, as we say, “cathected”—in some way. He reached that conclusion from the fact that interpreting ideational content alone did not relieve the symptoms. The “charge” that Freud postulated must “cathect” the ideas was the charge of affect. The main issue in treatment, therefore, was to get at the affective charge and drain it.

Because the patient sometimes did not want to be “drained,” the technique was the same as for surgery: force the patient. Almost everyone was using hypnosis at that time—it was very much “in the air”—so Freud tried hypnosis to force the draining of the abscess. It was a big step from using hypnosis to “command” symptoms away, to using it for cathartic purposes—that is, using it to find out what produced the symptoms. Freud’s early writings about his use of hypnosis indicate that, as in the case of Anna O. and Breuer, patients tended to come back for more and more hypnotic treatments. Freud did not understand that phenomenon at the time, because he did not yet know about transference.

Freud then developed the theory that there must be some force between the underlying “psychic abscess” and Consciousness that kept the abscess from becoming conscious. That concept led to a change in technique: The patient was allowed to struggle with his or her resistances. The change from catharsis to resistance analysis was not as momentous, however, as the step from hypnosis (for “commanding away” symptoms) to catharsis.

The concepts of this phase were those of the early 1890s—for example, “The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence” (1894). Already at this stage the concepts were remarkably complete: They included the Unconscious, defenses against the Unconscious, split of Consciousness originating in traumatic experiences, and reexperiencing traumatic events and emotions in the treatment. Freud knew also that what had to be changed was not just one side of the conflict; both sides had to be dealt with. Perhaps the main thing Freud did not know at that time was transference.

Originally the concept of trauma was a very simple one—namely, a recent event in which the person had been overwhelmed with emotion. It did not take Freud long to deduce that the recent event was no more than an intermediate trauma. He observed that recent traumata tended to cluster around certain recurrent complexes, usually sexual, which could be traced back to disturbing childhood events. Eventually he traced all traumata back to sexual events of childhood, which he believed were the main source of traumatic experiences in early life. With respect to the treatment of such problems, Freud was always sensitive to the importance of the interplay between clinical observation, theory, and therapy. He considered psychoanalysis the best form of psychotherapy, although the least immediately effective.

There is no “one theory” of the first phase. All one can suggest is a rather general theory that emphasized certain matters at a particular time. Freud wanted to develop a theory that would encompass not only neurotic phenomena but also normal behavior. That is why studying the psychopathology of everyday life (1901) became so important to him. He hoped to prove the validity of his concepts about psychopathology by demonstrating their existence in total mental functioning.

The “Project” (1895) was an attempt to “neurologize,” but Freud soon got over the need to do that. The trouble with the Project was that there was no way to find out how such activities took place neurophysiologically. For a long time, however, Freud retained a need to conceptualize in terms of concrete imagery.

Freud used a simple set of “ordering principles” to classify and bring some order into the mass of psychological data that he observed. He developed and used five such ordering principles:

1. The principle involved in the concept of “depth psychology”—that is, levels of mental functioning, a hierarchy of psychological functions.

2. The topographic point of view.

3. The dynamic point of view.

4. The economic point of view.

5. The genetic point of view.

Lecture 3

The Dynamic and Topographic Points of View

The discussi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Front Matter
• Part I Kohut’s Lectures on Psychoanalytic Psychology (1958–1960)
• Part II Concepts and Theroies of Psychoanalysis (1963)
• Part III Kohut’s Method of Synthesizing Frudian Theory
• Part IV Kohut’s Concepts of Narcissism and Self Psychology: Continuties with Freudian Theory
• References
• Index