Self-Psychology 101

Reina Juarez, PhD
Self-Psychology 101

When I learned about Self-Psychology, the doors to know myself, people, and the world opened up with a bright perspective.

This way of conceptualizing human beings and the world in which we evolve has given me a heart within psychology with the strength of empathy, which I use daily in my personal life and my work with students, colleagues, and the university community. For instance, when we use empathy we see the world from the “other person’s perspective,” facilitating understanding and serving as antidote to many self-defeating emotions such as anger, envy, jealousy, and hate. Empathy can also be used toward one’s self to uproot self-depreciation, self-alienation, and self-hate.

Self Psychology talks about our need for “self objects” to get to know ourselves and self-regulate. In the beginning, self-objects are our caregivers and that stuffed-animal, food, toy, or blanket that gave us comfort. As we grow up, all of us continue to need self-objects and their nature changes as we change. Some are internalized such as the ability to love one’s self, while others continue to exert their influence from the outside. Music, art, partners, friends, books, mentors, nature, meditation … all of them can serve as self-objects that help us self-sooth and feel connected with positive forces in our lives.

I support the life-long quest of surrounding ourselves with self-empowering self-objects to be truly alive, wise, compassionate, loving, generative, creative, generous, joyful, healthy, and full of vitality!!!! There is no need to put up with toxic people and environments.

As we become self-efficient we can select our self-objects, including the people we want close to us, the places where we want to live and work, and give meaning, purpose, and plenitude to our lives. There is so much more to Self-Psychology. I hope we can talk more about it soon.