As an analyst, can one espouse a therapeutic modality (self-psychology) if the founder is an individual clearly in conflict and denial, as Kohut was, vis-a-vis his Judaism? My answer is no! Even though he was elected president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the widespread opinion was that he suffered a narcissitic personality disorder. His narcissistic rage was clearly most evident in his projecting of total hatred onto anything remotely connected with his Jewishness. Two of the most telling incidents in Strozier's book is when Kohut went to lunch in a kosher delicatessen with Paul Ornstein, one of his disciples(with a rabbinic background), whose analyst wife is an Auschwitz survivor. Kohut purposely ordered a ham and cheese sandwich with a glass of milk, which had the effect of humiliating not only the waiter, but both Ornsteins. Is this an individual whose philosophy one wants to follow? It was reported in Martin Bergmann and Milton Jucovy's book "Generations of the Holocaust" that Kohut's treatment of his patient, Mr. A, who had to flee the Nazis in Germany, only focussed on the patient's structural deficit. Kohut saw no connection between the child being a Holocaust survivor and his psychopathology. Is this characteristic of the empathy so widely touted as being practiced by "self-psychology"? Otherwise, Strozier's biography is interesting, although it gets bogged down in theoretical dogma, and could have used some tighter editing of chapters.