Premium
RITUAL AND SELF‐ESTEEM IN VICTOR TURNER AND HEINZ KOHUT
Author(s) -
Gay Volney P.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
zygon®
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-9744
pISSN - 0591-2385
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9744.1983.tb00514.x
Subject(s) - communitas , liminality , narcissism , psychoanalysis , oedipus complex , psychoanalytic theory , psychology , monster , sociology , epistemology , philosophy , art , anthropology , art history
. This paper uses Victor Turner's recent discussion of liminal and liminoid forms of communitas to criticize psychoanalytic praxis, both theory and therapy. In so doing it argues that Turner's distinction can be sharpened by assimilating it to the Marxist concept of commoditization. Heinz Kohut's analysis of narcissism can be supplemented by considering how self‐esteem, like other forms of behavior, is ritualized, particularly in the mother‐child matrix. We can account for the recent increase in narcissistic disorders, in part, by noting how liminal forms of communitas have given way to liminoid forms. Liminoid forms of communitas, like that established in the analytic relationship, secure self‐esteem less adequately than do liminal forms.