Kohut's Twinship Across Cultures

The Psychology of Being Human

Koichi Togashi, Amanda Kottler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138819160
• eBook ISBN: 9781317578659
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Kohut's Twinship Across Cultures: The Psychology of Being Human chronicles a 10-year-voyage in which the authors struggled, initially independently, to make sense of Kohut's intentions when he radically re-defined the twinship experience to one of "being human among other human beings".

Commencing with an exploration of Kohut's work on twinship and an illustration of the value of what he left for elaboration, Togashi and Kottler proceed to introduce a new and very different sensitivity to understanding particular psychoanalytic relational processes and ideas about human existential anguish, trauma, and the meaning of life. Together they tackle the twinship concept, which has often been misunderstood and about which little has been written. Uniquely, the book expands and elaborates upon Kohut's final definition, "being human among other human beings." It problematizes this apparently simple concept with a wide range of clinical material, demonstrating the complexity of the statement and the intricacies involved in recognizing and working with traumatized patients who have never experienced this feeling. It asks how a sense of being human, as opposed to being described as human, can be generated and how this might help clinicians to better understand and work with trauma.

Written for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists interested in self-psychological, intersubjective, and relational theories, Twinship Across Cultures will also be invaluable to clinicians working in the broader areas of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, social work, psychiatry and education. It will enrich their sensitivity and capacity to understand and treat traumatized patients and the alienation they feel among other human beings.

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The many faces of twinship

From the psychology of the self to the psychology of being human

Koichi Togashi, Ph.D., L.P.

Amanda Kottler, M.A. (Clin. Psych.)

Twinship has a unique history in the development of Kohut’s psychology of the self. Originally considered a subcategory of the mirror transference (Kohut, 1968, 1971), it had little theoretical weight and was referred to using two interchangeable but very different terms (“alter-ego” and “twinship”). However, towards the end of his life, Kohut’s ideas had changed radically. He began to recognize twinship as an independent selfobject transference and gave it equal status to the idealizing and mirroring selfobject experiences. In spite of this shift, at the time of his death, in comparison to other selfobject experiences, Kohut had written very little on the concept.

A number of post-Kohutian self psychologists (Basch, 1992; Martinez, 1993, 2003; Ulman and Paul, 1992; Shapiro, 1998; Gorney, 1998; Kottler, 2007; Togashi, 2009a; Philipson, 2010) have developed Kohut’s ideas, making reference to the fact that twinship is the most prominent and fundamental selfobject experience. In spite of this, it has still not received any more attention than the other selfobject experiences. Further, it remains the insufficiently developed and understood challenge that Kohut left us at the time of his death.

We take up this challenge by responding to Kohut’s (1984) last statement that “much remains to be done” (p. 194) on the twinship selfobject needs. We tease out and clarify the many faces that Kohut introduced us to regarding what we now see as the multifaceted notion of twinship.

Twinship as Kohut left it

Kohut (1984) left us with twinship defined in two significantly different ways; first as a sense of “essential alikeness” and second, as a feeling that one is “a human being among other human beings”. He did not comment specifically on the two correlated but very different definitions. This begs the question of what he and other contemporary self psychologists have in mind whenever they refer to the twinship experience.

We describe seven “faces” of Kohut’s twinship, each elaborated by contemporary self psychologists. We also show their relevance to Kohut’s personal history supporting Atwood and Stolorow’s (1979) argument that a theory of psychoanalysis and the theorist’s personal life are intricately entwined. We argue that Kohut’s change in the way he defined twinship represents a fundamental shift in his theory. We believe the two different definitions of twinship represent a transformation that was taking place for Kohut, both personally and theoretically. We see the transformation as a shift from the psychology of the self to what we refer to as the psychology of being human. At the same time we see a transformation from the psychology of the disorder of the self to what Brothers (2008) refers to as trauma centered psychoanalysis.

The many faces of twinship

In addition to leaving us with two distinctly different definitions, Kohut represented the twinship transference and experience in many, sometimes quite obscure, ways. While the diversity of his descriptions may have helped to deepen discussion on the concept by his followers, it also created confusion and a range of contradictions. In this section, in an attempt to tease out some of this confusion, we develop and describe seven different “faces” to help us focus on Kohut’s multifaceted notion of twinship.

Face 1: Twinship as something between merger and mirroring

When Kohut (1968) introduced twinship, he argued that the mirror transference could be divided into three forms: the merger, the twinship, and the mirror transference, in a much narrower sense. In that paper, he described what he would call “the alter-ego or twinship transference” (p. 489, italics in original) as “a less archaic form in which the patient assumes that the analyst is like him or that the analyst’s psychological makeup is similar to his” (p. 489). Kohut follows this position in his 1971 book, The Analysis of the Self, stating that the yearning for twinship is experienced by an individual who seeks a merger with the other, but who to some extent recognizes the other as a psychologically separate existence. He posits that in the twinship transference, “not a primary identity but a likeness (similarity) with the object is established, [which] corresponds to a more mature developmental phase than that from which the merger transference takes its origin” (p. 122). He adds that in the transference, a patient experiences his analyst “as the separate carrier of his own (repressed) perfection” (p. 123).

In this discussion, the essential difference between the three forms of mirror transference is based on the degree to which an individual can see the other as an extension of himself. A patient’s claim that his analyst is essentially like him is, in this paradigm, understood as a less archaic form of his longing to merge with his analyst in complete union, but a more archaic form of his longing to be mirrored by his analyst, as a separate person.

Our attempts to understand what Kohut had in mind when he saw twinship in this way have led us to believe that this face of twinship was influenced by, and related to, Kohut’s relationship with Ernst Morawetz who entered Kohut’s life when Kohut was ten years old. Until then, Kohut’s mother was virtually his only companion. Their relationship was intense and unusual. She was “crazy,” kept a “tight grip” on him, and was overly intrusive (Strozier, 2001, pp. 22 and 160). She obsessively searched for any blemish on her son’s skin every day and squeezed his blackheads when she found them. She was insensitive to how painful it was for her son whose body and skin were, for her, simply an extension of herself. The relationship between Kohut and his mother in his early childhood seems, therefore, to have been organized at the level of a merger, until Kohut’s mother took on a lover when he was ten years old. With a largely absent father and the loss of his mother in this way, it was clearly a traumatic time for Kohut (Strozier, 2001). His psychological survival is attributed, at least in part, to the arrival of Ernst Morawetz.

Morawetz was ten years older than Kohut and was expected to provide company and intellectual stimulation for Kohut. He did this and more. As Kohut’s first real friend, the companionship and connection that Ernst provided was “psychologically lifesaving” for him (Strozier, 2001, p. 24). They would play creative intellectual games like imagining what would have happened to the architecture of Vienna had Socrates not died, and Kohut learned a huge amount about the world from Ernst.

Kohut (1984) said, “if earlier mirroring responses are badly flawed the child will intensify his search for the structuring presence of a [twinship] selfobject experience ... for the uplifting, self-organizing experience that comes from the availability of a selfobject that is idealizable” (p. 205). Clearly, this was the case with Ernst whose presence sustained him at a time of great stress. What happened between them was a symbolic representation of what else was being experienced: love, intimacy, and deep empathy. From what Kohut says, Ernst certainly provided him with a twinship selfobject experience that, by definition, vitalized him and his potential for learning.

Their relationship was, according to Strozier (2001), so intimate that they became absorbed with each other psychologically and physically, and the relationship was often sexualized. Referring to his relationship with Ernst, Kohut argued that it was not the sexuality, but the empathy and affection that counted. Kohut (1984) emphasized their sharing of interests and said, presumably thinking of their relationship, “the subtlety of love and connection can arise even in deeply unequal relationships” (p. 200). This is quite different to the merger evident in Kohut’s relationship with his mother. In other words, we suggest that the basic quality of twinship between Kohut and Ernst is a more archaic form of mirroring, but a less archaic form of merging with others.

Face 2: Twinship as a process of mutual finding

Another question about Kohut’s early depiction of twinship is why Kohut originally put twinship and mirroring into the same category. We argue that they provide very different experiences for an individual, but that they are organized as a result of both different and similar psychological processes, which we describe as mutual recognition and mutual findings. In spite of his traditional terminology, Kohut describes the mirroring experience in a bidirectional way. He states that a mirroring need is activated “by looking at the mother and by being looked at by her” (Kohut, 1971, p. 117). We believe he sees the two different psychological processes in this experience. A good example is found in Kohut’s discussion of a child’s experience in the Oedipus phase:

If the little boy, for example, feels that his father looks upon him proudly as a chip off the old block and allows him to merge with him and with his adult greatness, then his oedipal phase will be a decisive step in self-consolidation and self-pattern-firming.

(Kohut, 1977, p. 234; italics added)

In this statement, Kohut (1977) mainly uses the phrase “chip off the old block” to describe a mirroring experience. However, some seven years later, he uses the same phrase specifically as an example of twinship (Kohut, 1984, p. 199). We believe that in this process a boy finds himself in his father’s mind in two ways: first, through the boy’s recognition of his father’s affective passion and responsiveness to him, namely the “gleam in the father’s eye,” and second, through his recognition that his father has found a similar aspect of himself and his own subjectivity in the boy.

From a nonlinear dynamic systems view, VanDerHeide (2009) expands Kohut’s description stating that mirroring “comprises both reciprocal forms of responsiveness and mutual experiences of being recognized and appreciated” (p. 433). A patient and an analyst both experience being seen, accepted, and understood by one another, and both respond to another’s recognizing of being recognized by one another. In the context of mutual mirroring-recognizing processes between VanDerHeide and her patient, she discusses how they share and experience the similarities and differences between themselves. In her response to VanDerHeide’s article, Hershberg (2011) discusses and reveals how a twinship selfobject experience is activated in the process of a mutual mirroring process.

In Chapter 4 (see also Togashi, 2010), Togashi posits that a mutual finding process between an analyst and a patient is the essence of a twinship experience. He argues that a twinship experience is organized as a delicate balance between a patient’s finding herself and not-herself in her analyst, and an analyst’s finding himself and not-himself in his patient. For Togashi, the finding of oneself or not-oneself is not equivalent to recognizing or validating the other’s subjectivity. It is a psychological process in which two participants, consciously and non-consciously, regulate a sense of sameness and difference in their effort to match some aspects of their subjectivity. This, for us, is the key to distinguishing the difference between a mirroring experience and twinship relatedness in an analytic dyad.

Kohut’s confusion between mirroring and twinship experiences is evident in his struggle to fit in with American psychoanalysis. Although Kohut recognized the limitations of mainstream psychoanalytic thinking early on, he, for a long while, clung to the organizing selfobject function of “Freudian theory” (Mollon, 2001, p. 107) in an attempt to remain “essentially alike.” At the time of writing The Analysis of the Self (1971), Kohut was especially struggling to gain their recognition. He was vigilant about the advancement of his career. He played expertly by the rules, and became “Mr. Psychoanalysis” in the United States, ultimately serving as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association (Strozier, 2001). His early theorizing attempted, in his own words, “to pour new wine into old bottles” (Kohut, 1984, p. 193) as he tried to make his ideas appear less radically new and more acceptable to his fellow analysts and to himself. We believe that for him initially being recognized (mirrored) by the American ego psychologists and having an experience of twinship with them (essential alikeness) were almost equal.

Face 3: Twinship as a sense of belonging

Towards the end of the 1970s, Kohut’s evolving ideas had become unpopular with the mainstream classical fraternity and severely criticized by traditional ego psychologists. They saw him as a maverick, or a misfit. This in spite of the fact that in the process of establishing his own psychology Kohut was pivotal in the paradigm shift of the psychoanalytic field into a relational or two-person psychology (Strozier, 2001; Fosshage, 2009). Coinciding with this painful struggle is a shift in Kohut’s definition of twinship. In his book, How Does Analysis Cure? published posthumously, Kohut (1984) describes the twinship experience as a sense of belonging. He states:

The mere presence of people in a child’s surroundings—their voices and body odors, the emotions they express, the noises they produce as they engage in human activities, the specific aroma of the foods they prepare and eat—creates a security in the child, a sense of belonging and participating, that cannot be explained in terms of a mirroring response or a merger with ideals.

(Kohut, 1984, p. 200, italics added)

Self psychologists in the post-Kohutian era have elaborated on this type of twinship experience from a contemporary perspective. White and Weiner (1986) argue that “the essence of the twinship selfobject relationship is a similarity in interests and talents, along with the sense of being understood by someone like oneself” (p. 103). Basch (1994) redefined a twinship transference as “the need to belong and feel accepted by one’s cohort” (p. 4), in which he saw two needs; that is, a need to feel that members of the group are alike and a need to feel that one is experienced by group members as essentially alike.

Wada’s (1998) description of his own experience of the disruption of twinship during his stay in the United States for his psychoanalytic training is useful in an attempt to understand this process. He reveals that the “alien-culture” experience profoundly influenced his sense of self. He observes himself being overwhelmed by a paranoid anxiety that others are looking at him with scorn or dislike. He states, “I felt completely defeated when those around me not only used English freely, but also could be spontaneous and relate naturally to each other” (p. 113).

Kohut’s conflict over this type of twinship tie could be found in his exile and assimilation to a new culture. In spite of becoming an American citizen five years after arriving in Chicago, Kohut continued to appear conflicted over a sense of belonging. Given the many references Kohut made to the intrapsychic significance of familiar language to illustrate twinship experiences, it is interesting to note that for the rest of his life Kohut was never sure if he dreamed in English or German (Strozier, 2001). Although Jewish, he became a participating member of the Unitarian Church in Chicago where he preached sometimes. He also repeatedly and convincingly claimed to have no personal identification with Judaism. He indicated his ineradicable conflict over being Jewish by denying any knowledge of Jewish customs to the point of making scenes in kosher delis by insisting on having a ham sandwich with a glass of milk (Strozier, 2001).

In the professional field, in spite of his success we believe it is unlikely that Kohut ever felt like he really belonged to, or was accepted by, the mainstream of American psychoanalysis, particularly towards the end of his life. We suspect that feelings of being somewhat marginalized were always present for Kohut. It is understandable therefore that he sought followers with whom he could feel that sense of belonging but also to whom he could hand down his ideas and thoughts. And so, another face is revealed.

Face 4: Twinship as a way of passing on talents and skills to the next generation

Kohut introduced the idea of a bipolar self in 1977, in his book The Restoration of the Self where he maintains that there is a “correlated set of talents and skills” (p. 177) between the ambitions and ideals of the nuclear self. Although Kohut did not explicitly address twinship in this model, by 1980 he had ultimately linked twinship with the intermediate area of the bipolar self (Detrick, 1985).

Kohut (1977) discusses talents and skills using the example of Mr M, a writer who is not fully satisfied with his job. Kohut describes that Mr M’s talents and skills in the area of language and creative writing are related to “his dictionary-collecting, word-loving, language-wise father” (p. 12), even though the “phase-appropriate, chip-off-the-old-block-type merger with (or twinship relation to) the idealized father” (p. 13) was not fully met. Still, according to Kohut, with regard to Mr M, “in the area of the talents and skills that the self needed in order to express its patterns, the damage [of Mr M’s self] seemed to be slight and circumscribed” (p. 48). In the process of the analysis, Mr M decided to establish a writing school, and came to experience “in combination with this specific talents and skills ... a ‘constant flow of energy’” (p. 48). For Kohut, the most significant aspect of Mr M’s effort to educate students in his school was in the way he created an environment in which “by proxy, the students had to acquire a new skill” (p. 48). In other words, in the writing school, he passed on his skills to the younger students and tried to create himself in them.

We can see another example in the same book (Kohut, 1977), where Kohut discusses an archaic type of twinship tie through Proust and Remembrance of Things Past. He argues that Proust’s trauma is manifested in the relationship between the narrator in the book and Albertine. He says, “the narrator does not love her, he needs her, he keeps her as his prisoner ... and he molds her to a likeness of himself by educating her” (p. 181n, italics added). Another well-known description of twinship is “the little girl doing chores in the kitchen next to her mother or grandmother; the little boy working in the basement next to his father or grandf...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The many faces of twinship: from the psychology of the self to the psychology of being human
• 2 A new dimension of twinship selfobject experience and transference
• 3 Twinship and “otherness”: a self-psychological, intersubjective approach to “difference”
• 4 Mutual finding of oneself and not-oneself in the other as a twinship experience
• 5 Trauma, recovery, and humanization: from fantasy to transitional selfobject, through a twinship tie
• 6 Contemporary self psychology and cultural issues: “self-place experience” in an Asian culture
• 7 Placeness in the twinship experience
• 8 “I am afraid of seeing your face”: trauma and the dread of engaging in a twinship tie
• 9 Is it a problem for us to say, “It is a coincidence that the patient does well”?
• 10 Being human and not being human: the evolution of a twinship experience
• Epilogue: what is “being human”?
• References
• Index