Concept
Narcissistic transference
In self psychology, the mirror and idealizing transferences through which a patient uses the analyst to supply missing functions of the self; Kohut later called them selfobject transferences.
- Introduced by
- Heinz Kohut
- Key works
- 1
- Related
introduced by
- Heinz Kohut 1971
diverges from
- Transference 1971 Treats what is transferred as thwarted developmental needs rather than conflict.
derives from
- Narcissism 1971 Kohut gives narcissism a line of development separate from object love and names the transferences after it: the analyst is invested with narcissistic rather than object libido. Freud had held that narcissistic patients form no transference at all.
- Selfobject 1971 In these transferences the patient experiences the analyst as a self-object, a part of the self that supplies its missing functions; Kohut later renamed them selfobject transferences.
- Grandiose self 1971 The mirror transference is the therapeutic revival of the grandiose self, as the idealizing transference is of the idealized parental imago.