Understanding Kohut’s Self Theory From A Philosophy View

With the whole man as the center of his thoughts,Heinz Kohut explores the essence of human existence and create a mind research paradigm with existentialism.His self theory suggests the existential themes such as existential essence and ways,and existential suffering and rescue.Therefore,the theory contains profound philosophical problem consciousness.The self theory should be understanded as a system constituted by epistemology,existentialism and methodology.The theory indicates that the relational essence of existence and its tragic mood,and requires self to hold and overcome limitations of existence in its relationship,which is achieved through empathy-comprehension construction of the relationship by self.Self is defined as the center of spiritual existence,construction should take self introspection as the starting point of spiritual cognition,empathy as the essence of cognition,and understanding and explaination as approaches so that subjects could share experiences and dialogue each other,so as to serve people’s grasp of their own existence.Centering on self and its empathy,Kohut’s self theories achive the unity in cognition and method,in object and purpose,in the thinking on existence and resolving of practice.The self theory has its own values: it combines specific survival and pathological problems to explain the existence,enrichs and expands existentialism themes such as the essence,existent composition,and the fate of human being.Kohut criticizes Freudianism in existential standpoint,deepening and beyond psychoanalytic investigation on human to a certain extent.He provides an empathy cultural paradigm,emphasizing the construction of a common destiny of human as the rescuring approach.However,with limitations from psychoanalysis,Kohut couldn’t dispense the psychological origin theory,and the self theory could not completely overcome psychologism and scientism,thus neither reveal substantially sociality and historic of human existence.