What is freedom? Where is happiness? Are they my cat’s job?
In Freudian ego psychology, happiness is found through autonomy. It’s the ability to sustain one’s own love and nourishment. The target is decreased reliance and increased ego strength.
Heinz Kohut believed in autonomy. He lived Freud’s ego psychology dogma, becoming a famed psychoanalyst in Chicago. But as his practice grew, he noticed something: his patients weren’t getting better. No matter how astute his observations were or how dialed in his interpretations of their unconscious were, they stayed stuck in the muck of old emotions and patterns. What helped was empathy. Real empathy. When the patient sensed they were understood, over and over—like really understood—they were able to reenter the realm of the normally neurotic, having mourned whatever was in their way.
Kohut went on to develop the field of Self Psychology and shifted therapy’s end game. He stopped the hunt for absolute autonomy; he helped patients find healthy interdependence, positing that we never lose our reliances but can only learn healthier means of meeting our needs.
I find this target aligned more with reality.
We got a cat six weeks ago. If she just so happens to jump onto our bed as I’m drifting to sleep, my day is made. From the impact of my cat’s behavior, I am far from autonomous. Yet, to rely nightly on my cat to meet my emotional needs is absurd. For her, the front window is often more intriguing than our bed. For us to own healthy interdependence, I must empathize and accept this as reality, or I risk, in my search for absolute autonomy from her impact, losing the small but joyous moment when she spontaneously leaps onto the bed.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(If you’d like a free copy of my audiobook on Audible, I have a few free access codes remaining! Send me an email and I’ll forward you the code.)
