Search for the Self

Heinz Kohut (1913-81) was born on May 3, 1913 in Vienna, Austria - a country whose culture, literature and music permeated his very being. He finished his medical studies in 1938, after Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany, giving him little time to escape the horrors that awaited the Jews in that country. He then spent a year in England, from where he emigrated to the United State and settled in Chicago in 1939. Trained in neurology and psychiatry, he attained the rank of Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at the University of Chicago. He became a psychoanalyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, where he was a highly esteemed member of the faculty. As teacher, supervisor, mentor, thinker his two-year course on Freud's work became legendary. Kohut became President of the American Psychoanalytic Association for 1964-65. During the last ten years of his life, from 1971 to 1981, even while he was deathly ill throughout, he created his post-Freudian "self psychology" - a new theory and treatment approach to psychoanalysis - that was appreciated world-wide. Kohut is the author of many books, including 'How Does Analysis Cure?' and 'The Restoration of the Self'. Paul H. Ornstein, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and Training and Supervising Analyst, Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute.

• Foreword -- Introduction -- Death in Venice by Thomas Mann: A Story About the Disintegration of Artistic Sublimation -- August Aichhorn-Remarks After His Death -- On the Enjoyment of Listening to Music -- "The Function of the Analyst in the Therapeutic Process" -- Psychanalyse de la Musique (1951) -- "Natural Science and Humanism as Fundamental Elements in the Education of Physicians and Especially Psychiatrists" -- "`Eros and Thanatos': A Critique and Elaboration of Freud's Death Wish" -- The Haunting Melody: Psychoanalytic Experiences in Life and Music (1953) -- Beethoven and His Nephew: A Psychoanalytic Study of Their Relationship (1954) -- "Modern Casework: The Contribution of Ego Psychology" -- "The Role of the Counterphobic Mechanism in Addiction" -- Introspection, Empathy, and Psychoanalysis -- Observations on the Psychological Functions of Music -- The Arrow and the Lyre: A Study of the Role of Love in the Works of Thomas Mann (1955) -- "Some Comments on the Origin of the Influencing Machine" -- "A Note on Beating Fantasies" -- "Looking Over the Shoulder" -- Childhood Experience and Creative Imagination -- Beyond the Bounds of the Basic Rule -- "Further Data and Documents in the Schreber Case" -- "The Unconscious Fantasy" -- The Psychoanalytic Curriculum -- Concepts and Theories of Psychoanalysis -- The Position of Fantasy in Psychoanalytic Psychology -- Some Problems of a Metapsychological Formulation of Fantasy -- Franz Alexander: In Memoriam -- Values and Objectives -- Autonomy and Integration -- "Correlation of a Childhood and Adult Neurosis: Based on the Adult Analysis of a Reported Childhood Case" -- "Termination of Training Analysis" -- "Some Additional `Day Residues' of `The Specimen Dream of Psychoanalysis'" -- Forms and Transformations of Narcissism -- The Evaluation of Applicants for Psychoanalytic Training -- The Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders