timulating experience as a demand to be absorbed by the activities of the mother- submission via masochistically sexualized relinquishment of independence (Kohut, 1979, p. 16/17).His lack of a father figure led to a homosexual relationship in which Mr. Z experienced an enriching friendship with a strong and admired man. This person provided the twinship he so desperately craved for, someone who reflected and confirmed his self and who possessed shared interests with him. He also served as a healthy figure for Mr. Z to idealize. He looked up to the man as someone he could emulate. The personality intermeshment he experienced with his mother in place of this man after the relationship terminated was not in his best interests. Ultimately, it proved to be a delusion, causing Mr. Z to relapse due to the lack of a stable and strong self-object (Kohut, 1979, p. 20). This perception surfaced in the second analysis, whereas in the first the analyst thought the homosexual relationship symbolized regression to the strong phallic mother (Kohut, 1979, p. 19).Transference naturally followed in the patient's effort to recover self-objects. Unfortunately, they went unnoticed during the first analysis due to the classical methods employed by the analyst. He saw material in terms of infantile drives and conflicts about them rather than the absence of self-objects, primarily a father figure. Idealization followed by twinship attempts arose as a result of a boy absent of an alterego self-object-namely his father. Once he began to solve the mystery of this man, through interaction with him and observation of him, he was able to see a strong individual. His father was independent and capable of existence without the mother (Kohut, 1979, p. 21). This realization ultimately enabled Mr. Z to begin to stand on his own and develop a strong sense of self. Psychologists tend to focus on one area of psychological diagnosis, such as psychoanalysis, and...
