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pathology in mirroring to mutate into pride, while those of idealization will become integrated as enthusiasm, through the process of ‘ transmuting internalization’ , through which the patient becomes able to take over the selfobject functions previously provided by the analyst (Kohut 1971). Socarides and Stolorow (1984) elaborated on the developmental transformation of affectivity within the frame of Self Psychology, highlighting the use of affects as self-signals, and the primary role of selfobject transference bond as the central developmentally transformative agent, leading to ‘transmuting internalization’. Kohut’s students and collaborators Paul Ornstein and Anna Ornstein (Ornstein & Ornstein, 1980) further explicated the role of empathy, selfobject transferences, narcissistic rage in the interpretive process with regard to the therapeutic action, and the patient’s dread to repeat traumatic self- object disappointments, and hope for a new beginning in treatment. From Self Psychology perspective, it is important to recognize that the extended theory of the mind never results in an isolated person but rather in a lifelong employment of others as selfobjects to aid in mirroring and idealization. One is never free of selfobjects. This is in line with the fact that transferences, both selfobject transferences as well as others, are ubiquitous and universal. In line with a gradual shift from the language and conceptions of the structure hypothesis to an experience-near theory ( Lichtenberg 1992), Robert Stolorow (1997) introduced intersubjectivity as a broad principle necessary for and inherent in human relatedness. In Stolorow’s broad conception (Stolorow, 1997), the intersubjective field , which is located at the intersection of individual subjectivities, is at the center of the entire psychoanalytic framework as well as all human relatedness and all development. Individuals coalesce as precipitates of the field. Here, the intersubjective field itself, and not the individuals that make it up, is the basic, indivisible ground of experience. This field is the functioning whole and is the object of psychoanalytic process (Stolorow & Atwood, 1989). In the psychoanalytic process, “The psychological field formed by the interplay of the patient’s transference and the analyst’s transference is an example of what we call an intersubjective system ” (Stolorow, 2013, p. 383, original italics). (See also separate entries, SELF, TRANSFORMATIONS, INTERSUBJECTIVITY and THE UNCONSCIOUS.)
VI. H. Hybrid Perspectives in North America
VI. Ha. Intersubjective Ego Psychology A uniquely North American/US ‘Independent Tradition’ of Intersubjective Ego Psychology is described by Nancy Chodorow (2004) as holding in tension and reconciling two contradictory psychoanalytic approaches – ego psychology and interpersonal psychoanalysis, established by founding American theorists Hartmann and Sullivan, and a direct progeny of Hans Loewald and Erik Erikson, the contemporary Intersubjective Ego
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