Relational Self Psychology: Could There Be Any Other Kind? A Discussion of Magid, Fosshage & Shane's Paper, The Emerging Paradigm of Relational Self Psychology: A Historical Perspective.

In this paper I discuss Magid, Fosshage and Shane's impressive overview of the contributions to Relational Self Psychology in the psychoanalytic literature, contributions they see as having emerged for the most part after Kohut's death and therefore as having been carried out almost entirely by Kohut's followers. But while the authors see Kohut's work as having hewed closely to a one-person psychology, I use my discussion to highlight what I see as the two-person themes in Kohut's own writings, suggesting that he may have been more relational in his thinking than initially meets the eye. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]