@ Li Songwei Is Ego Psychology a Kind of Psychoanalysis? What is the status?

Self-psychology is a theory founded by Heinz kohut of kohut. Based on the expanded study of psychoanalytic narcissism, a new psychoanalytic school of self-psychology has been developed. Psychoanalysis is the core of self-psychology, but there are fundamental differences between self-psychology and classical psychoanalysis in how to treat the relationship between visitors and therapists. In the classical psychoanalytic theory, the psychoanalyst keeps an emotional distance from the visitors in order to objectively analyze the information obtained from the visitors. In self-psychology, therapists emphasize gaining the trust of visitors. Once the patient trusts the therapist, the visitor will talk more, so that the therapist can collect more and better information and make more accurate analysis.

The so-called "self" actually refers to the visitor's understanding of his subconscious self-personality and relationship, including his own needs. Different from the "object" in traditional psychoanalysis, it is an "explicit" construction that includes the whole psychological structure, that is, an internal experience with temporal and spatial continuity. Generally speaking, it is the visitors' understanding of themselves according to the depth of psychoanalysis. Visitors' subconscious experience of others and the environment is called "self-object" by kohut. Self-psychological analysis is to guide visitors to analyze their subconscious by establishing a good relationship between them. Generally speaking, its model is still psychoanalytic. However, kohut thought that only by establishing a good working relationship can we make a better analysis, so he introduced the concept of "empathy" into humanistic psychology.

It can be said that self-psychology is the theory and technology of new psychoanalysis, and it also represents the latest achievements of psychoanalytic model so far. It can be said that it is unique in academic circles. However, due to the decline of psychoanalysis as a whole, self-psychology can only occupy a small part in the whole contemporary psychological system with positivism as the core. However, due to the differences in understanding between psychoanalysis and traditional classical psychoanalysis, they are not mutually inclusive, which makes their position somewhat embarrassing.