Heinz Kohut
Psychoanalyst
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
A penetrating biography of Heinz Kohut, the father of "self psychology" and one of the most influential psychoanalysts since Freud.
Heinz Kohut stood at the epicenter of the twentieth-century psychoanalytic movement. After escaping Nazi-occupied Vienna, he settled in Chicago, where he swiftly rose to become the leader of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, a breeding ground for groundbreaking research and clinical practice in the field.
In the post-World War II era, American psychoanalysis flourished as analysts expanded upon Freud's insights. However, the discipline's waning humanism began to trouble both analysts and patients. Kohut, America's most prominent and influential analyst, was among the first to acknowledge the limitations of classical psychoanalysis. His work brought the self into sharper focus and helped shape psychotherapy as we know it today.
In this insightful biography, Charles B. Strozier portrays Kohut as a paradigmatic figure in American intellectual life: a charismatic individual whose ideas enriched many, yet one who could be overly self-absorbed and grandiose. Strozier brings to his narration of Kohut's life all the tools of an analyst – intelligence, erudition, empathy, contrary insight, and a readiness to delve deep beneath the surface.
"Strozier navigates this complicated material with skill and sensitivity, never reducing his complex subject to a case study, in a work that will appeal to a small but dedicated audience." - Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Developments in psychoanalysis are, appropriately, often the products of half-discovered impulses and longings, so it's fitting that Kohut's The Analysis of the Self, which essentially invented and delineated relational psychoanalysis, was the product of many conflicting influences. This new, definitive biography not only records Kohut's illustrious career, but gives fresh insights and reflections upon his work. Born into a well-to-do Jewish family in Vienna in 1913, Kohut grew up with an intrusive mother, had an affair with his male tutor when he was 12, structured his sexual life around masochistic fantasies and studied to be a physician until he fled Austria in 1939 and moved to the U.S. Here, he became well known as a psychiatrist, and then as a psychoanalyst, reaching full bloom in 1971 with the publication of The Analysis of the Self. Strozier (Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America) has produced a sympathetic narrative of Kohut's life and work, but avoids the pitfalls of hagiography. He addresses Kohut's sexual ambivalence (including a close, lifelong friendship with conductor Robert Wadsworth) and his tormented relationship with his Jewishness, which ran so deep that Kohut was known to cause scenes in kosher restaurants by insisting on being served a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. Strozier navigates this complicated material with skill and sensitivity, never reducing his complex subject to a case study, in a work that will appeal to a small but dedicated audience.
