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How Does Analysis Cure?

Edited by Arnold Goldberg with the collaboration of Paul E. Stepansky
The Austro-American psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut was one of the foremost leaders in his field and developed the school of self-psychology, which sets aside the Freudian explanations for behavior and looks instead at self/object relationships and empathy in order to shed light on human behavior. In How Does Analysis Cure? Kohut presents the theoretical framework for self-psychology, and carefully lays out how the self develops over the course of time. Kohut also specifically defines healthy and unhealthy cases of Oedipal complexes and narcissism, while investigating the nature of analysis itself as treatment for pathologies. This in-depth examination of “the talking cure” explores the lesser studied phenomena of psychoanalysis, including when it is beneficial for analyses to be left unfinished, and the changing definition of “normal.”

An important work for working psychoanalysts, this book is important not only for psychologists, but also for anyone interested in the complex inner workings of the human psyche.

254 pages | 6.10 x 9.10 | © 1984

Psychiatry

Table of Contents

Preface, by Elizabeth Kohut
Introduction by Arnold Goldberg, M.D.
Part One: The Restoration of the Self—Responses and Afterthoughts
1. Analyzability in the Light of Self Psychology
2. A Reexamination of Castration Anxiety
3. The Problem of Scientific Objectivity and the Theory of the Psychoanalytic Cure
Part Two: The Nature of the Psychoanalytic Cure
4. Self-Selfobject Relationships Reconsidered
5. The Curative Effect of Analysis: A Preliminary Statement Based on the Findings of Self Psychology
6. The Curative Effect of Analysis: The Self Psychological Reassessment of the Therapeutic Process
7. The Self Psychological Approach to Defense and Resistance
8. Reflections on the Self-analytic Function
9. The Role of Empathy in Psychoanalytic Cure
10. The Selfobject Transferences and Interpretation
Notes
References
Index

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