Chairman:
Shelley R. Doctors, Ph.D.
Presenters:
Mark Gehrie, Ph.D
Morton Shane, M.D.
Estelle Shane, Ph.D.
Mary Gales, M.D.Discussant:
Linda Chernus, M.S.W.
Self Psychology Page | 20th Conference Program
The concept of the selfobject, the central theoretical discovery of Heinz Kohut, expands and transforms an understanding of psychological boundaries. With the advent of the selfobject concept, it became possible to understand the strengthening and vitalizing impact on self experience of people and events external to the person. It is therefore fitting that Self Psychology now formally turns it's attention to the question of boundaries.
A considerable body of psychoanalytic work is devoted (1) to ideas concerning the development of boundaries and (2) to the pathology involved in the failure to develop or maintain appropriate boundaries. This panel will consider how the selfobject concept does and does not reconfigure notions of boundaries in the therapeutic situation. Shane, Shane and Gale's paper, "Psychoanalysis Unbound" will approach the question from the vantage point of the non-linear, dynamic systems approach they have been describing.