Children need to idealize and emotionally "sink into" and identify with the idealized competence of admired figures. They also need to have their self-worth reflected back ("mirrored") by empathic and caregiving others. These experiences allow them to thereby learn the self-soothing and other skills that are necessary for the development of a healthy (cohesive, vigorous) sense of self. For example, therapists become the idealized parent and through transference the patient begins to get the things he has missed. The patient also has the opportunity to reflect on how early the troubling relationship led to personality problems. Narcissism arises from poor attachment at an early age. Freud also believed that narcissism hides low self esteem, and that therapy will reparent them through transference and they begin to get the things they missed. Later, Kohut added the third major self-object theme (and he dropped the hyphen in self-object) of alter-ego/twinship, the theme of being part of a larger human identification with others.
Though dynamic theory tends to place emphasis on childhood development, Kohut believed that the need for such self-object relationships does not end at childhood but continues throughout all stages of a person's life.
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