Developmental Systems Self Psychology

In this paper I present a model for psychoanalysis that builds on the developmental systems self psychology I developed in 1997 with Morton Shane and Mary Gales. That model incorporated aspects of self psychology, attachment theory, infant research data, and nonlinear systems thinking. The theory is discussed not only on its own merits, but also in the context of its shared sensibility with other relational self psychologies, intersubjective systems theory, and ideas drawn from the relational perspective. Six features of Kohut's self psychology are addressed and described both in the way I now consider each of them and as they compare and contrast with aspects of the other theoretical perspectives I have referred to. Specific additions to the 1997 model are featured, along with particular attention to some conceptual reformulations, including the concepts of “positive new experience” and transference.