Kohut’s psychology of the self defines psychoanalytic cure as a process of self-structuralization that results in a productive life, rather than simply as the resolution of oedipal conflict (Cure 7). His version of the well-known definition of mental health (the ability to work and to love) is "the capacity of a firm self to avail itself of the talents and skills at [its] disposal, enabling [the individual] to love and work successfully" (Restoration 284). To Kohut, the role of parents is central in the development of a firm self-structure, which he believes depends more upon the effect of the child’s total environment, than on "gross events," such as the deaths of parents (187-91). One step in the formation of the "bipolar self" occurs as a result of the infant’s early "mirroring," or interaction with a supportive parent figure; this stage is necessary for the development of a healthy self-esteem. Another step occurs as a result of the child’s "idealization" of a parent figure–a stage which precedes the successful internalization of values (Analysis 40-49, 106-9). When the process of self-structuralization is left incomplete, the result is a "self-disorder," defined by the persistence of archaic self and parent images that have not become integrated into the mature structures of the personality (Russell 140).
Instead of emphasizing the growth from dependence to autonomy, as does traditional psychoanalysis, Kohut emphasizes the changed nature of the relationship between self and "self-objects" (Cure 52). He believes that throughout life human beings need healthy attachments to empathic self-objects which replace their infantile self-objects, their parents. Kohut’s view of aggression is also different from the traditional view of it as the manifestation of an innate drive. He sees rage as a reaction to the feeling of loss of connection between self and empathic parental object, or, to put it another way, as a reaction to the sense that the integrity of the self has been violated. Rage results from "the breakup of the primary self-experience in which, in the child’s perception, the child and the empathic self-object are one" (Restoration 91).
In Adam Bede, Eliot portrays characters who suffer from varying degrees of disorders of the self, resulting from their lack of the parental and community support that is necessary for the development of a firm sense of identity. Eliot’s characters have lost their parent(s), yet at the same time, because of their unresolved need for them, have failed to separate themselves from their infantile parental image(s). In their need to attach themselves to an infantile object, Arthur, Adam, and Dinah choose Hetty, who functions in the community both as a fertility/mother figure and as a child figure. As the characters struggle to grow beyond their childhood attachments and find replacements for them, however, they need to kill off their old parental images as symbolized by Hetty–hence their banishment of her.
Although Eliot seems to blame Hetty for her flaws, her presentation of the harsh family and social conditions that lie underneath the surface of the Eden-like county of Loamshire shows that Hetty has been victimized by its inhabitants. She has been effectively excluded from the community of Hayslope from the time of her arrival. Orphaned at age ten, she has come to live with her aunt and uncle, the Poysers, who are conscientious about the formalities of caring for her, but who treat her differently from their own children. Hetty’s grandfather, who is part of the household, also treats her differently from his son’s children, because he still resents her mother’s marriage to a man beneath the Poysers' status.
Building on Creeger’s view of Hetty’s "hardness" as "childish . . . egocentricity" (228), Harris sees Hetty not as an "adult sinner," but as a "confused child" ("Hetty" 179), essentially "abandoned" by her relatives. Her relatives' rigid incapacity to accept her as part of their "respectable" world has resulted in her "arrested development" (180). She has not been able to find an appropriate role in her family or community; her status is somewhere between that of the servants and the Poysers' own children. To Harris, Hetty’s lack of parental support has prevented her development of the "sense of an inner self" that she needs to be able to assess the values imposed on her by the Hayslope "shame-culture" (193, 184). Extending Harris’s analysis, one may note that, as Eliot portrays her, Hetty has not completed the steps in the creation of the constituents of Kohut’s bipolar self. Her intense need for mirroring is shown in her Narcissus-like tendency to gaze at length at her reflection, either in a polished surface or a mirror (117, 194, 199, 294–96, 378). Her failure to internalize values is reflected in the way that "shame . . . was poor little Hetty’s conscience" and "religious doctrines had taken no hold on [her] mind" (382, 430).
Contrasting the usual view of Hetty as "a temptress" with his own interpretation of her as "a little girl," Harris demonstrates that her feeling for Arthur is not "sensual love," but a "Cinderella-fantasy" (182-83). Hetty’s propensity for looking at herself in the mirror, along with her self-defeating involvement with Arthur, who she dreams will provide her with wealth and importance, suggest her need for self-completion. In the scene in her bed-chamber, she gazes at her image while imagining that Arthur is with her: "his arm was around her, and the delicate rose-scent of his hair was with her still" (195). Hetty is searching for her identity by attaching herself to Arthur, who has the established place in Hayslope that she longs for.
Hetty’s treatment of babies and children reenacts her own sense of abandonment. She hates children as much as she hates the lambs and the baby chickens on the farm. When Hetty gives birth to her own child after she runs away from home, she is not able to behave as a mother normally would. "I seemed to hate it," she later confesses to Dinah. Earlier in the confession she says, "And then the little baby was born, when I didn’t expect it; and the thought came into my mind that I might get rid of it, and go home again. … I longed so to go back again." Hetty’s already weak sense of self deteriorates further when she leaves Hayslope, the only source of her identity and values. Her primary thought, when she thinks of murdering her child, is to "go home again" (498). In her confusion, however, "by burying the child, but not completely, Hetty tries both to kill it and to let it live" (Harris 187). Hetty is ambivalent, and rather than actively killing the baby, she abandons it in the woods. Thus the murder takes the form of passive aggression.
The characterization of Arthur, whom Harris calls Eliot’s "first extensive study of unconscious motivation" ("Misuse" 45), reveals that his inadequate self-development, although less severe than Hetty's, sets him up for his destructive interaction with her. While Arthur feels his future position in Hayslope is secure, his background has some parallels with Hetty's. For one thing, he has no parents. His mother has died only three months after his christening, and his father is missing. All we know about his father is that Arthur’s godmother, Mrs. Irwine, has a low opinion of him (108), just as Hetty’s relatives have a low opinion of her father. Like Hetty, Arthur’s lack of adequate parent figures creates his ongoing need for the firm support that would enable him to complete the process of his self-structuralization.
Just as Hetty is treated with indifference by her grandfather, so Arthur feels at times "positively hate[d]" by his (302). He also feels controlled by him. As he says to Mr. Irwine, "My grandfather will never let me have any power while he lives" (215). In the same conversation Irwine tells him that his mother (Mrs. Irwine) has prophesied that Arthur’s "lady-love will rule [him] as the moon rules the tides" (216). Arthur replies after a narrative interlude, "A man may be very firm in other matters and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman" (216). Arthur’s sense of being controlled is easily transferable to other relationships; he is susceptible to "woman’s witchery." Furthermore, like Hetty, his lack of family support has resulted in his failure to internalize firm values. Eliot comments that Arthur "lived a great deal in other people’s opinions and feelings concerning himself" (216). As Harris says, Arthur "depends on the approbation of others rather than an inner sense of self [and has] a moral sense based mainly on shame" ("Misuse" 53, 54). He shares to a lesser degree Hetty’s need for self-completion, yet also like Hetty, chooses a self-defeating relationship.
Arthur is described as having a "loving nature," but Eliot’s irony becomes clear in the subsequent description of his treatment of the "old gardener." When Arthur was seven, he impulsively kicked over the old man’s pitcher of broth. Finally realizing that it was the man’s dinner, he "took his favorite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same Arthur ever since, trying to make all