The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known.

Current views of the self in psychology position the self as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity. It may be the case that we can now usefully attempt to ground experience of self in a neural process with cognitive consequences, which will give us insight into the elements of which the complex multiply situated selves of modern identity are composed.

Heinz Kohut initially proposed a bipolar self compromising two systems of narcissistic perfection: 1) a system of ambitions and, 2) a system of ideals. Kohut called the pole of ambitions the narcissistic self (later, the grandiose self), while the pole of ideals was designated the idealized parental imago. According to Kohut, these poles of the self represented natural progressions in the psychic life of infants and toddlers.

Self Psychology is a school of psychoanalytic theory and therapy created by Heinz Kohut and developed in the United States at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. Self psychology explains psychopathology as being the result of disrupted or unmet developmental needs. Essential to understanding Self psychology are the concepts of empathy, self-object, mirroring, idealising, alter ego/twinship and the tripolar self. Though self psychology also recognizes certain drives, conflicts and complexes present in Freudian psychodynamic theory, these are understood within a different framework.

Kohut came to psychoanalysis by way of neurology and psychiatry in the 1940s, but then 'embraced analysis with the fervor of a convert...[and as] "Mr Psychoanalysis"' took on an idealizing image of Freud and his theories. Subsequently 'In a burst of creativity that began in the mid-1960s...Kohut found his voice and explored narcissism in new ways that led to what he ended up calling a "psychology of the self".' Thus the publication of 'his book The Analysis of the Self[1971]...was what Kuhn would call a new paradigm.'

Heinz Kohut (3 May 1913, Vienna – 8 October 1981, Chicago) was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of Self psychology, an influential school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory which helped transform the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches.

Kohut was born on 3 May, 1913, in Vienna to Felix Kohut and Else Kohut (née Lampl). He was the only child of the family. The parents were assimilated Jews living in Alsergrund, or the Ninth Disctrict, and they had married two years previously. The father was an aspiring concert pianist, but he abandoned his dreams having been traumatized by his experiences in World War I and moved into business with a man named Paul Bellak. The mother opened her own shop sometime after the war, something that few women would do at the time in Vienna. The mother’s relationship with the son can be described as “narcissistic enmeshment.”

Kohut was not put into school until the fifth grade. Before that he was taught by several tutors, a line of “Fräuleins and mademoiselles.” Special care was taken that he learned the French language. From 1924 on he attended the Döblinger Gymnasium in Grinzing or the 19th District, where the Kohuts would build a house. During his time at the school he had one more tutor, but the role of this person was to engage him in educational discussions, to take him to museums, galleries and the opera. This man was the first friend in his life. Before that he had been isolated from his peers by his mother.

Carl Gustav Jung (/ˈjʊŋ/ YUUNG; German: [ˈkarl ˈɡʊstaf ˈjʊŋ]; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, the founder of analytical psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and symbolization. While he was a fully involved and practicing clinician, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts.

Jung considered individuation, a psychological process of integrating the opposites including the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining their relative autonomy, necessary for a person to become whole. Individuation is the central concept of analytical psychology.

Many psychological concepts were first proposed by Jung, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. Popular psychometric instruments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), have been principally developed from Jung's theories.