Preface

Abstract

Extract This book introduces Heinz Kohut to a generation of psychotherapists—including psychoanalysts, clinical social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and a host of others committed to talk therapy—as well as scholars, who have lost sight of his significance in the history of psychoanalysis. The fact that Kohut is seldom read anymore is partly his own fault; his writing can be difficult and obtuse. Unpacking his books, especially his masterpiece, The Analysis of the Self (1971), requires a deep knowledge of the most abstract metapsychological language of ego psychology and, of course, of Freud himself. Beginners and more advanced practitioners wander glassy-eyed through passages about “libidinal cathexes passing through the object,” the “idealization of the superego,” or “mergers with archaic objects.” A common occurrence in the treatment of narcissistic patients, he states at one point in Analysis and in italics, no less, is the “propensity toward a reactive hypercathexis of the grandiose self.” It is clear that to understand Kohut, he needs to be relieved of his language.1Close And yet despite his abstractions and even contradictions, Kohut was the transformative thinker whose work represented a paradigm shift from the classical tripartite model of id/ego/superego, based on an elaborate theory of instincts and drives, to one of the self as a holistic construct. Our goal in this book is to bring Kohut back into focus in the psychological world as the major thinker in the theory and practice of contemporary psychotherapy. Kohut was not alone in challenging the drive theory of Freud and ego psychology that reigned supreme in the middle of the 20th century. Psychological thinkers as early as Carl Jung questioned Freud, and his challenge was later picked up by Erik Erikson, Donald Winnicott, and a host of others, such as Ronald Fairbairn. At the very least, one can say many serious and smart thinkers in mid-century strenuously objected to the dogmatic and hegemonic rule of drive theory in clinical psychoanalysis. They yearned in various ways to treat immediate experience and to respond in more empathic ways to the needs of patients than the theory allowed. But their challenges were piecemeal, disconnected, and sometimes conceptually confusing. Some wrote movingly and empathically about clinical issues but fell back on drive theory to explain their clinical experiences. Others branched out in new ways conceptually but failed to develop a consistent general theory. There was, in other words, no coherent alternative perspective to drive theory within the psychological and psychoanalytic worlds. And yet things were changing. The idea of self was in the air, as was a yearning for empathy and mutuality.2Close