Psychosocial Theories of the Self

Benjamin Lee Center for Psychosocial Studies On March 29-April 1, 1979, the Center for Psychosocial Studies held a conference in Chicago on "New Approaches to the Self" in which all the authors in this volume partici pated. Over the years the Center has acted as a communica tions link and coordination point for interdisciplinary dis cussions and research. Several years ago, we discovered that there was a renewed interest among psychoanalysts, anthro pologists, and developmental psychologists in the investiga tion of the self, and the reason for this groundswell of ac tivity was the discovery of the importance of problems of meaning and interpretation in each discipline. Since inves tigators in each of these disciplines were relatively ignor ant of developments in the other approaches, we felt that a conference would be a timely catalyst. Each of the authors gave a presentation at the conference, and it is a mark of the success of the interdisciplinary effort that almost all the papers were extensively revised in response to the dis cussions. The first three papers by Arnold Goldberg, Ernest Wolf, and Robert LeVine all use Heinz Kohut's psychoanalytic self psychology as their starting point. Goldberg places the self within a broader framework of philosophical and psychoana lytic theories, finally locating it in the types of communi cative relationships a person constructs in his interactions with others. Wolf's paper explicates the basic ideas and innovations of Kohut's self psychology.