Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst

by Charles B. Strozier

Heinz Kohut (1913-1981) stood at the center of the twentieth-century psychoanalytic movement. After fleeing his native Vienna when the Nazis took power, he arrived in Chicago, where he spent the rest of his life. He became the most creative figure in the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and is now remembered as the founder of 'self psychology,' whose emphasis on empathy sought to make Freudian psychoanalysis less neutral.

Kohut's life invited complexity. He obfuscated his identity as a Jew, negotiated a protean sexuality, and could be surprisingly secretive about his health and other matters. In this biography, Charles Strozier shows Kohut as a paradigmatic figure in American intellectual a charismatic man whose ideas embodied the hope and confusions of a country still in turmoil. Inherent in his life and formulated in his work were the core issues of modern America.

The years after World War II were the halcyon days of American psychoanalysis, which thrived as one analyst after another expanded upon Freud's insights. The gradual erosion of the discipline's humanism, however, began to trouble clinicians and patients alike. Heinz Kohut took the lead in the creation of the first authentically home-grown psychoanalytic movement. It took an emigre be so distinctly American.

Strozier brings to his telling of Kohut's life all the tools of a skillful intelligence, erudition, empathy, contrary insight, and a willingness to look far below the surface.

Genres: Psychology, Psychoanalysis

538 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 2001

Reviews

[Sam Schulman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't let my rating fool you - this book is everything you wanted from a psychoanalytic biography of a psychoanalyst, including displays of Oedipal feelings from biographer to subject, sibling rivalry between biographer and subject's child, allegations of sex crimes (ala Freud's first patients) - it's got it all.
Not to be missed by connoisseurs.

[أحمد · Rating 4 out of 5]

اهمية هذا العمل في رأيي تكمن في تسليطه الضوء علي حياة هاينز كوهت والتسلسل الزمني للأحداث الأساسية لشخصيته
يرسم العمل ملامح لشخصية كوهت .. ما الأشياء التي الهمته الإتجاهات المؤثرة في مسيرته الشخصية والعملية

في رأيي سيجد القارئ صعوبة كبيرة في فهم كتابات كوهت بدون هذا العمل.. حيث يضع كتابات وافكار كوهت في سياق يمكن فهمه وادراك جوانبه المختلفة
العمل ممتع أيضا فهو قصة شخص مؤثر في تاريخ التحليل النفسي ومؤسس لنظرية الذات Self psychology

اعجبني العمل وانصح بقراءته قبل قراءة اعمال كوهت