self-psychology

A psychodynamically oriented theory and therapy based on the work of Heinz Kohut and others who delineated two forms of narcissism, one toward the self and the other toward the object. Self-objects are entities in the world that we experience as part of ourselves. Individual growth can occur when the client transforms positive healthy objects into an internalized self-structure, a process called "transmuting internalization". In therapy, through empathic attunement, the patient transforms the self-object functions of the therapist into an internalized self-structure.