Cushman and Kohut: Constructing Identities vs. Developing Selves in the Context of Modern American Life. Issue 3 (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Riker, John H.
• Is Part Of: Psychoanalysis, self and context. Volume 15:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 230
• Page End: 236
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: Cushman -- Kohut -- developing selves vs. constructing identities -- modern American life -- social constructivism; Psychoanalysis -- Periodicals; Psychotherapy -- Periodicals; Self psychology -- Periodicals; 155.205
• DOI: 10.1080/24720038.2020.1752215
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2472-0038

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In this paper I address Phillip Cushman's critique of psychoanalytic psychotherapy as being both naïve about how socio/political forces generate persons in America and complicit in reproducing the deficient form of self generated in America—the "masterful, bounded, empty self, " a kind of self he finds particularly validated in the theories of self psychologists Winnicott and Kohut. I both show how these critiques are misguided and provide a different narrative for why psychodynamic therapy arose, one that sees it not as a pawn of socio/discursive forces, but as an important source of rebellion, one offering an alternative way of being human from the regnant forms dominating modern life. I further show how Kohut's self psychology can help us negotiate the difficult problem of Otherness. In the end, I bring Cushman and Kohut together by seeing Cushman's work as exploring how identities are constructed, while Kohut is articulating a theory of how selves are developed. The crucial conceptual point is to differentiate ego identities from nuclear selves and understand their psychological interdependence.