An examination of the relationship between psychoanalytic development of the self and attributions and expectation for events: An attempt at bridging positive psychology and Kohut's self-psychology

Two studies pertaining to the theory of psychoanalytic self psychology were performed. The first study was an attempt to relate the self psychological developmental constructs of grandiosity and goal-instability with different constructs of optimism in positive psychology. A canonical correlation analysis was performed using a student population (N=200). Significant results were found testing across two canonical functions (Wilk's lambda (lambda) = 0.754, F (8, 390) = 7.337, p < .000) with the first canonical function accounting for 95.6% of variance in the relationship between the two variable sets. The second study was an attempt to replicate the factor structure of an English version of the Self-Object Needs Inventory (Banai, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2005) with an American student population (N=199). Confirmatory factor analysis was not able to find a close enough fit between study data and the proposed 5-factor model found by Banai et. al., 2005. Findings in both studies are explored with attention to implications and application to the field of counseling psychology.