Five Kohutian Postulates

In comparison with the traditional notion of science as generalizable and predictive knowledge, Five Kohutian Postulates presents psychotherapy as a science of the unique. It uses the philosopher Imre Lakatos' emphasis on research programs that organize around a central postulate and auxiliary postulates to explicate Heinz Kohut's "self-psychology." Kohut's psychotherapy theory entails four auxiliary postulates that are interlinked to the central postulate of empathic understanding, and to each other. The main chapters illustrate how these postulates function as orienting stars in theoretical space to foster a firm psychotherapeutic identity, and to concurrently foster the inclusion of complementary ideas from other psychotherapy theories. These chapters also reveal how self-psychology exemplifies Lakatos's idea that the most valuable scientific theory is regenerative. The last chapter points to the need for post-modern psychoanalytic psychotherapy to take seriously the idea of a professional commitment to the patient.

As results from the present emphasis on short-term, technique-oriented psychotherapies or bio-therapy (medication) point to their valuable but limited roles in treating mental illness, this book emphasizes the need for extensive training in the treatment of self-disorders with developmental arrests using a long-term, empathy-based psychoanalytic psychotherapy approach. In addition to having a theory organized around the five postulates of Kohut, psychoanalytic psychotherapists need a professional commitment to patients and a significant experience of their own long-term, empathy-based training psychotherapy.

Ronald R. Lee lectures in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and is an honorary consulting psychologist to St. Vincent Hospital's Mental Health Department. Angie Rountree teaches in the Empathink Summer Schools and conducts psychotherapy in private practice in Melbourne. Sally McMahon teaches in the Australian College of Contemporary Somatic Psychotherapy and in Empathink Summer Schools.