Heinz Kohut

April 1, 2001
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.