Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Heinz Kohut was a psychoanalyst who changed the field into its modern form as we understand it today. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna in the early part of the last century, Kohut quickly showed promise as a gifted intellectual. He finished his university studies during the Anschluss and was barely allowed to take his final exams (being a Jew) that qualified him to be an M.D. He fled to the U.S. in 1939, and in the years after World War II he changed the face of psychoanalysis. While working with the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, he rose to prominence and eventually became the most prestigious analyst in the country, serving as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He recognized the limits of classical psychoanalysis and sought to put a more humanistic face on it. He struggled with this until his death in 1981. He could be stubborn and private and he could confound his closest friends, but the legacy he left with the field of psychoanalysis in the U.S. is legendary. Michael Spinella
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Historian and psychoanalyst Strozier (Lincoln's Quest for Union) knew Chicago analyst Heinz Kohut (1913-81) at the end of his life and is carrying on his work. One of the most important American analysts, Kohut became the leader of a less authoritarian and more compassionate school of psychoanalysis known as self-psychology, now a major force in humanizing Freudian theory and practice. The author recounts the gripping, moving, and instructive story of this driven, creative, cultured intellectual, who was much respected as a teacher and therapist but disliked for his arrogance. Healing, music, courage, religion, art, charisma, rage, and death are some of the topics covered in this splendid biography. Too important to leave to professionals, this accessible work is highly recommended for all libraries.DE. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC
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