Why Kohut’s Ideas Will Endure: The Contributions of Self Psychology to the Treatment of Children and to the Practice of Psychotherapy

This article describes the contributions that self psychology has made to the treatment of children and to psychotherapy under various circumstances: in hospital settings and in cases when psychotherapy is combined with the use of psychotropic medication. The relevance of self psychology beyond psychoanalysis is related two of its fundamental aspects: the empathic listening perspective and the selfobject concept. A therapeutic failure of a hospitalized patient is offered as an example where these two aspects of self psychology were not utilized.