Toward a critique of the psychology of the self

A critique of Kohut's "psychology of the self" is presented. This critique derives from the author's view that paradigm competition often unnecessarily polarizes and accentuates differences while obfuscating rather than facilitating communication. An attempt is made to delineate Kohut's valuable contributions and to integrate them within the structural hypothesis . In addition, a critique of a number of issues that are incompletely or "inexactly" elaborated within Kohut's paradigm is presented.