The City of Brotherly Love is a livable and stimulating city with opportunity for selfobject experience at every turn. What is lacking here is a community of clinicians who think and practice predominantly from a self-psychological perspective. Few from Philadelphia attend the annual meetings, although many people know fundamental concepts of self psychology and use them as parameters in a more eclectic psychodynamic approach to treatment.

The reason the analytic community of the fifth largest city in the United States has not been more hospitable to self-psychology may have to do with the existing medical analytic associations. The Society and the Association of Psychoanalysis have now merged to form the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. It is quite conservative in its approach. There is interest, especially among recent candidates, in theorists beyond Freud, including Mahler, object relations theorists, Bowlby's attachment theory and self-psychology.

Some of our most distinguished local analysts have found themselves seriously questioning many central tenets of self psychology without having a deep appreciation for what self psychology has to offer. This influence probably has had a powerful impact on the entire analytic community in Philadelphia. A past-president of the American Psychoanalytic Association and a senior training analyst, Homer Curtis, M.D., wrote papers during the late 1980s that criticized self psychology. Another analyst, Salmond Acktar, has been critical of self psychology, although recently he has substantially softened his attitude. The fact that the three declared self psychologists in the area, my husband, Howard, Pamela Holliman and I, are not psychoanalysts makes it difficult to influence the psychoanalytic community.

In spite of the desultory climate for self psychology here, two analysts have recently developed an particular interest in the theory and candidates have just requested that Alex Burland, M. D., teach a once a month workshop in self psychology during the spring quarter. Readings in that workshop will include works by Kohut, Wolf, Goldberg and Brandschaft. Dr. Burland said he thought that many analysts made use of self psychological ideas since these ideas are "not ignored but absorbed." His position, that the interpretation of the selfobject transferences is central to the treatment rather than the analyst simply being a "selfobject-something" certainly is in concert with standard self psychological technique.

John Frank, M.D., who leads a six year-old reading group that formed around the study of the cutting edge of psychoanalysis, considers those theorists who aren't included within the established body of classical psychoanalysis. The reading group's focus is primarily on intersubjectivity and attachment theory. They have read such authors as: Atwood, Benjamin, Davies, Chodorow, Greenberg, Hoffman, Mitchell and Stolorow. Dr. Frank noted that there is more interest in self psychology among psychologists and social workers than among medical psychoanalysts.

During the last self psychology annual meeting held in Washington, D. C. during October of 2002, I talked with several people from the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Washington. I was encouraged to join a long distance child and adolescent study group headed by Deborah Marks and conducted in cyberspace. My participation began in January and although I find the "virtual medium" tedious, I also find it wonderful to have direct contact with like minded clinicians.

I hope that this brief report from Philadelphia will bring forward more discussion about self psychology in the area. If there are any committed self psychologists in Philadelphia that I have not mentioned, I hope to hear from you, or anyone else interested in these issues, via e-mail at BakerFam@aol.com.