Kohut’s Concept of Self

Abstract This chapter explores the evolution of Heinz Kohut’s ideas away from Freud’s tripartite and fragmented model of psychic structure and Kohut’s development of a holistic psychology of self. Kohut argues that a self’s continuity across a life span points to nuclear understanding of self, as opposed to an agglomeration of selves states or internalized objects. This chapter elaborates further on Kohut’s idea of a virtual self giving rise developmentally to a nuclear self. His use of the term nuclear self presents a model of understanding development and experience as paradoxically enduring and yet continually morphing. In Kohut’s formulation of self, human suffering is born of self fragmentation rather than thwarted drive energies. Clinical and historical examples are provided to examine Kohut’s ideas of self when seen in distress and in health.