Grace for the Injured Self

The Healing Approach of Heinz Kohut

Terry D. Cooper, Robert L. Randall

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781608998395
  9781498257985
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630876234
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Even under the best circumstances in life, we all suffer psychological injuries to our self. These injuries from others can range from passive hurtful comments to intentional abusive assaults. The end result is that our sense of being a cohesive and secure self is threatened. We may begin to experience degrees of vulnerability and self-doubts, or of rage and desire for revenge. We may even feel as if we were "falling apart." In all cases these self-injuries chip away at our self-cohesion and self-esteem. Grace for the Injured Self helps us to better understand the significance of these injuries to our self, as well as how these injuries can be healed through the self psychology approach of Heinz Kohut. Throughout its pages, this book emphasizes the empathic presence of another as a source of grace. Empathy is the most powerful means by which the self is reassured, strengthened, and ultimately restored. It is this empathic responsiveness of others that holds our self together and helps us daily maintain our self-cohesion and self-esteem. The self psychology perspective of Heinz Kohut, who many consider the most significant psychoanalyst since Sigmund Freud, is made available here as a primary means by which clergy and other helping professionals can provide a healing context for the restoration of injured selves.

1

The Self Psychology Perspective

New creative endeavors deeply engage three aspects of the innovator’s life: their thought, their work, and their person. These three are interrelated yet separate domains. It is possible to “read” Heinz Kohut in these three ways. One way is to look at his thought. This has to do with the ideas and conceptualizations at the heart of his self psychology. Another way is to look at his work. This involves a consideration of his self psychology as a treatment approach for those suffering from disturbances of the self. A third way is to look at his person. This focuses on the imprint Kohut has left on self psychology that gives it a distinctive cast. We intend to present the self psychology perspective in these three ways.

The Basics of Self Psychology

You already know a lot about the “self” that Kohut talks about. You know it implicitly, through your experiences. You probably have used different words than self psychology uses, and you may not have consciously known the broader importance of the self as revealed by Kohut. But you are a self, and you already have an in-the-bones understanding of your self. We begin with that.

As you sit reading these words, it would be peculiar for you to say, or to acutely feel, “I am these hands holding this book,” or “I am these eyes scanning these words.” As individuals we exist through our body, yes, but we sense being more than our body parts or body processes. In the same way, you do not ordinarily say, “I am these thoughts going on in my head.” You experience your self as more than just mental processes, more than just what you are thinking at the moment. Similarly, in normal living you do not exist in a state of depersonalization where you feel that all you are is the role you play. That may happen from time to time, as all of us know, yet we typically experience that there is more to us than the performance of roles.

You implicitly know that there is this more inclusive dimension to you, something that holds all the parts, processes, and roles together. We typically refer to this core as our “self.” It is natural for us to sense and refer to our essential personhood as our “self,” by which we indicate the central structure and wholeness of our being. The points are these: first, without being taught it you sense that you are a self; and second, you also sense that your self is the nucleus, the core, of who you are.

There’s something else we implicitly know. The state of our self—its level of assuredness, its sense of well-being—is subject to fluctuations. Sometimes we feel alive and full of zest. We have energy for our own ambitions; we feel uplifted by our ideals; and we have deep empathy for the needs and struggles of others. Indeed, at moments we feel like singing, “I’m sitting on top of the world!” At other times we may feel depressed and limp. Projects and values seem empty, and our capacity for empathizing with others is depleted. It is then that we are inclined to sing the mournful spiritual, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.”

Hopefully you do not regularly swing back and forth between these extremes, but you know, implicitly, what those extremes are. And you know that all of us experience some fluctuations in the firmness of our self. We know this is normal, but we are also aware that some people seem able to maintain a generally positive feeling about their self even during stressful times, while other people feel their self threatened by nearly everything. To say it more precisely, we know persons who experience their selves as firm and consistent, who have positive and reliable self-esteem, whose body, mind, and emotions are balanced and harmonious. We know other people who experience their self as shaky and always on the verge of falling apart, whose self-esteem is unsteady and easily injured, and whose emotional, physical, and mental activities are listless, excessive, or in conflict. The first group has what self psychology calls “firm self cohesion.” The second group has what self psychology calls “weak self cohesion.”

There are varying degrees of self cohesion between these two extremes, of course. Hopefully your self has developed so that you feel basically strong and resilient. If so, then you tend to bounce back to some healthy state of self cohesion after encountering blows to your self (which self psychology calls “self injuries”) rather than experiencing your self falling apart to some degree (which self psychology calls “fragmenting”). The point here is this: not only do you implicitly sense you have/are a self and that it is the center of who you are, you also know that the condition of the self fluctuates between a general state of cohesion and a general state of disequilibrium.

What brings about this fluctuation in the self? Why do we sometimes feel so great and other times so lousy? The answer has to do with how responsive we feel others have been to us and how responsive we feel they presently are. We experience that in three main ways.

1. When we experience others approving of and applauding us we feel confident inside. Over time our self-esteem builds up from these affirming responses of others so that we are able to healthily affirm our own values and goals and self-perceptions.

2. When others are reliably available to us to lean on when the going gets rough and we are upset, we feel calmed and fortified inside. As a result of being responded to and feeling merged with uplifting individuals, we become able, over time, to soothe our own self when we are alone or hurt.

3. When others typically convey to us that they are like us and we like them, we feel that we belong, that we are included, that we are connected to others in deeply meaningful ways. As a consequence of being responded to by people who demonstrate that they are like us and we like them, over time we grow in the capacity to assure our self that we are normal and acceptable.

What wonderful, life-giving experiences these are! They are the essential experiences necessary for the development and maintenance of a cohesive, balanced, and vital self. For some of you these experiences are so naturally present that you take them for granted. Blessed art thou, for these are the roots of your basic sense of well-being in life. Others of us whose self is chronically shaky may not have known specifically what was absent in our life, but we have been painfully aware that something critical was missing.

From childhood on we have learned in our bones that how we feel and respond is in large measure influenced by how we experience others being for us. Self psychology gives the term “selfobjects” to those whose empathic responses we need for the development and well-being of our self throughout life. Sometimes we have an intense, urgent need for people to empathically respond to us so that we can hold our self together. And we may do whatever is necessary to get those responses. At other times we have a more quiet need for people to respond to us so that we can continue to feel adequate. The crucial point is that the fluctuations in our self cohesion are the results of how we experience others affirming or disconfirming us.

Something else happens to us when we feel let down by persons we rely upon to help us feel good about our self. When we are criticized or disappointed or rejected, we tend to respond by drawing back or by striking out. Injuries to the self lead us to withdraw in hurt or to react with rage. There is a wide range of depressive-withdrawal responses: from mild dismay to deep melancholy marked by grave self-doubts and even suicidal thoughts, for example. There is also a wide range of rage responses: from passive-aggressive acts to obsessive efforts for revenge, for example.

Although the world frequently does not seem to understand, we know inside that our withdrawal and/or rage are often our ways of trying to hold our self together. When our self is injured, we do all we can to feel reassured inside. Sometimes we do that by pitying ourselves; sometimes by getting hopping mad.

There are many other ways in which we strive to regain our self cohesion when we are injured. A person might attempt to reinstate self-esteem by remembering how he was affirmed as special by persons in the past. Or, a person may engage in some creative or physical activity that reaffirms physical and mental strength. Or, a person may immerse her self in comforting communion with God. Then again, we may engage in showy, impulsive, even risky behavior as ways to ward off terrible feelings of emptiness or uncertainty. The points to be made are these: we recognize how we search for empathic responses from others so that we can feel safe and strong; we also recognize our active efforts to restore and preserve our self cohesion when it is disturbed.

In our rich storehouse of implicit knowing is one final gem we want to unpack, namely the central needs of the self. We have already alluded to them.

1. From the time when we were small we can remember how the applause and words of praise from others made us feel really good about our self. Eventually those affirming responses built up and lodged within us and became the basis for our positive self-esteem throughout life. As a result, we are now able, as grown-ups, to be motivated and supported by our own mature ambitions and plans, and are able to still feel good about our self even when we fail at something, or when, alas, others criticize us.

If you think about it, however, you realize that you the grown-up, with the blessing of secure self-esteem, still want those experiences of being recognized, made special. You sense that you still need “mirroring” responses, as self psychology terms them: those responses of admiration and praise that keep you feeling confident. While hopefully you may not need mirroring responses in the same intense form you did as a child (mother jumping up and down applauding when you learned how to ride a bike, for example), you still rely upon more mature forms of mirroring for your ongoing, inner sense of well-being (dignified but appreciative applause after you give a speech, for example).

We do not outgrow mirroring needs; we just need them in more mature forms—if, that is, our self cohesion and self-esteem have originally been made strong by empathic responses in our growing up. If we have not been adequately mirrored by our early selfobjects, our self will fail to reach its full maturity. We will still operate out of our childhood grandiose self that needs, if not demands, mirroring responses to whatever we do or say. You see these traits in others; you may have some your self. Here our self is still needy, still vulnerable, still not firm, still in need of others to give us that assurance that we are special which we cannot give to our self. That’s a very difficult position to be in. Kohut helps us understand that we need to have deep empathy for those who try to hold their self together by seeking mirroring applause for their often obnoxious behavior.

2. Similarly, we can sense how from the beginning we have needed strong comforting figures to run to with our tears and bruises when we have fallen down. We can remember how the reassuring words and actions of Mother or Dad soothed the hurt when kids picked on us and gave us the courage we needed to go back and try again. Those empathic responses over time became part of our own ability to regulate our internal tensions and to soothe our own self. Consequently, as mature grown-up selves we are now able to find inspiration through our own ideals and values that lift us up. Furthermore, we can find encouragement in the memory of empathic responses from idealized persons in our past, and can experience joyful satisfaction from knowing that we share the visions and values of admired individuals we have never met. In this secure self state we are energized to present our self as a source of peace and strength for others, doing for them what has been done for us.

Have we outgrown this need for “merger” responses, or “idealizing responses,” as self psychology terms them: those responses from idealized, uplifting individuals in whose embracing presence we feel assured and whose courage we borrow for our own? What does your heart say? It says we have not outgrown them. If our self cohesion has a firm foundation, then we won’t need idealizing responses in the same form we needed them as a child. We will no longer need to sit in Dad’s lap and have him stoke our head as he comforts away our fear. Instead, we may feel a comforting glow by remembering his calm demeanor and the wisdom he imparted to us. But we never outgrow the necessity for reassuring responses from individuals we maturely idealize.

If, however, our life was void of idealized figures to merge with, or the responses of our idealized figures hurt us more than soothed us, then our self may not have adequately matured. We will still operate out of our childhood idealizing self, needing to feel an intimate part of individuals and groups we declare are great and powerful and “the best.” Only then can we feel safe. Only then can we feel any sense of calm certainty. This, too, is a painful situation to be in. As Kohut helps us understand, people will do nearly anything to escape ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Greetings to Our Readers
• Chapter 1: The Self Psychology Perspective
• Chapter 2: Self Injury and the Human Condition
• Chapter 3: Kohut and the Seven Deadly Sins
• Chapter 4: A New Pastoral Care Orientation for Parishioners
• Chapter 5: Pastoral Care of the Church as a Group Self
• Chapter 6: First Interview with Heinz Kohut
• Chapter 7: Second Interview with Heinz Kohut
• Chapter 8: Getting Something from Kohut’s Perspective on Religion
• Closing Words for Our Readers
• Bibliography