In this book, John Hanwell Riker develops and expands the conceptual framework of self psychology in order to offer contemporary readers a naturalistic ground for adopting an ethical way of being in the world.

Introduction: Psychoanalysis, Self Psychology, and the Humanistic Tradition
Chapter 1: Knowledge in Psychoanalysis: Can There Be a Science of Subjectivity?
Chapter 2: The Life of the Soul
Chapter 3: Subjectivity, the Ego, and the Self
Chapter 4: The Erotic Self: Freud, Kohut, and Plato
Chapter 5: Ancient Theology and Contemporary Self Psychology: Monotheism, Mono-Selfism, and the Transgressions of Omnipotence
Chapter 6: Emerson and Kohut: the Self in Relation to Nature
Chapter 7: Self Psychology, Ethics, and Modern Society
Chapter 8: Self Psychology and the Problem of the Other
Chapter 9: What Do Humans Need to Be Human: Economic Society, Self Psychology and the Problem of Social Justice
Chapter 10: Self Psychology and Historical Explanation: The Death of God and the Birth of Impressionism-Forms and Transformations of Narcissism in the Nineteenth Century
Conclusion

John Hanwell Riker is professor of philosophy at Colorado College.