Summary The Impact of Loss of a Parent and Having a Sibling on Self Psychology

Abstract

Psychotherapeutic approaches have different perspectives on the difficulties of thedevelopment of the individual’s self-esteem. Kohut believed that in order to establish a healthysense of self, people need to experience idealized, grandiose and twinship experiences in the earlyyears of life. For this, the child’s idealization, grandiose and twinship self-object needs must bemet by his caregivers or environment. It is the massive or premature interruption (such as loss)with his self-object relationship in the early stages of his life that makes the person problematiclater. Moreover, Mitchell focuses on the loss of the self-worth through siblings or peers inchildhood. She thinks that without the acceptance of the loss of uniqueness the child feels hatredtoward its sibling or peers. In order to transform that hate into love the child should understandthat he is in sequence with others. In other words, he should understand that he is different fromhis siblings as being ‘other’ as well as he is ordinary as others. Mitchell names this sequencing asmother’s law.In this article, the difficulties experienced as psychogenic substance abuse and anger problemswere addressed in terms of self-psychology. This work was evaluated through Kohut’s view onself-psychology and Mitchell’s view on siblings’ role on self via a case example. Moreover, whenconsidering a case like this, the role of the therapist was emphasized in relation to Kohut’sthoughts on transference relationship.

Özet

Bu çalışmada psikojenik madde kullanımı ve öfke problemleri olarak yaşanan zorlukların kişinin kendilik psikolojisi açısından ele alınması amaçlanmıştır. Çalışma Kohut'un kendilik-psikolojisi kuramı ve Mitchell'in kardeşlerin self üzerindeki rolü üzerine düşünceleri temelinde bir vaka üzerinden ele alınmıştır. Ayrıca böyle bir vaka ile karşılaşıldığında Kohut'un aktarım kuramı çerçevesinde terapistin rolünün ne olması gerektiği üzerinde durulmuştur