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From: Simon Sobo, M.D.
Date: 7/18/99
It has always interested me that my "Narcissism as a Function of Culture", which appeared in the 1977 Psychoanalytic Study of the Child has never been addressed by followers of Kohut. No agreement or disagreement is in the literature. Yet, the article directly challenges most of Kohut's conclusions. Here is Anna Freud's comments about the article: "I read immediately what you have written and found it very interesting and convincing. Since my experiences with the Student revolt in Yale University and later some analysis of adolescents, I have searched for the right words to describe the processes which underlie the young people's attitude, but I was not able to find them. I believe that you have done much better in this respect and find myself quite fascinated by your elaborations..." Although I can not do justice to the thread of arguments in the original (it is recommended that the reader go to it) but quickly summarized, the argument is that the traditional sublimation of the needs of the ego ideal is for it to be incorporated into an ideal self which is formed out of an idealization of authority figures (i.e. usually the father in the oedipal complex). This is reenacted in adolescence where the search for heroes corresponds to the loss of the father's authority. I believe that this is what Kohut's Mr. Z found in his second anlaysis (after Kohut became president of the American Psychoanalytic Association) Memories of Mr. Z's father also became correspondingly less devalued. When we have cultural periods in which authority is devalued such as was found in the years of the counterculture, narcissism correspondingly flourishes, as indiviudals try to find idealization in themselves. I do not believe the mother's failures in mirroring play an important role in narcissism, but, on the contrary may represent promising what can't be delivered, i.e. oedipal victory. It is the developmental failure of the father to cut off the boy's needs to be exquisitely mothered, and replace those needs with an idealization of him that is the primary pathology.
I realize that this position is rude in a site where Kohut has become something of an icon, but nonetheless it should get your passions going again. Certainly, attacking my position will be more satisfying than the hair splitting that Self Psychology has apparently become.