Analysis of Nic

Nic is a middle-aged, upper middle class, white, lesbian to married to Jules. Although she often drinks too much (3-4 glasses of wine at a meal, she is outwardly a successful gynecologist and a mother to Joni (18) and Laser (15), who she and Jules, each conceived through a sperm donor, Paul. Nic is controlling in her everyday interactions with her family, is anxious over losing that control, and is threatened by anyone who would try to take attention away from her as a mother or a partner. She also does not appear truly engaged and interested in her family, often because she is rigid and preoccupied with small details in her life. Joni is about to start college and Nic is beginning to play a less important (selfobject) role in her life. This combined with Paul, their sperm donor, entering their lives threatens Nic’s narcissistic vulnerability. Nic’s character will be looked at through the lens of Heinz Kohut and Self Psychology. A deficit model, Kohut’s psychology of the self helps elucidate certain phenomena not explained by the classical drive model, in particular narcissism, which Kohut saw as playing a role in psychological health. “Kohut believed that narcissism has its own line of development so that no individual becomes independent of selfobjects, but rather requires throughout life a milieu of empathically responding selfobjects in order to function” (St. Clair, 2003, p. 148). These selfobjects are defined as “those persons or objects that are experienced as part of the self or that are used in the service of the self to provide a function for the self” (St. Clair, 2003, p. 148). Development of the self is in relationship to selfobjects, not as a progressive series of stages. These selfobjects are important sources of mirroring, sources of an idealized other to merge with, and fulfill the need to feel for knowing are others in the world that are similar to ourselves. This, as well as the inborn potential of the child, are primary factors