Heinz Kohut: biography and professional career of this psychoanalyst

Heinz Kohut was an Austrian psychoanalyst who developed his entire professional career in the city of Chicago, in the United States.

The highlight of Kohut's life has been the development of his theory of the self, which was out of touch. framework of Freudian theories, its core construct being the "self" on the personality of being human.

The following will briefly review the life of this Viennese psychoanalyst through a biography of Heinz Kohut, highlighting the most important milestones and events of his professional career.

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Brief biography of Heinz Kohut

Heinz Kohut was born in 1913 in Vienna, belonging to an upper-middle class Jewish family. His father, named Felix, was a pianist with a recognized career, who had to collaborate on the eastern front for 4 years during the First World War.

His mother, Else, was the main support for the marriage's only son, Heinz. She was always an overprotective mother with her son, so during her early college years, Kohut spent her years learning at home with the help of tutors hired by his mother.

However, Heinz ended up going to school for his last year of primary education, spending then to study for 8 years at the Doblinger Gymnasium, a secondary school in Vienna.

Your teenage years

During adolescence, Kohut had a tutor named Ernst Morawetz, who took it upon himself to nurture the young man's cultural interest, taking him to visit museums and the opera, where they could go up to three times a week.

Kohut from a very young age proved to be a cultured person with a great eagerness for learning in various fields such as history, literature, the arts and music; always being updated with respect to the most avant-garde trends of the time.

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University stage

In 1932 he enrolled in medicine at the University of Vienna, where he completed his university career, graduating in 1938.

At that time he did not show much interest towards Sigmund Freud nor towards psychoanalysis; Nevertheless, He had already done research on psychotherapy around the year 1937, at which time he found the work of a psychologist known as Walter Marseilles interesting., which was specialized in a test used primarily to assess personality, the Rorschach test.

Subsequently, he began to investigate a psychoanalyst named August Aichhorn, who was a friend of Freud, having to interrupt his study for a Political-social event that took place that year in his country, the "Anschluss", or what is the same, the takeover of Austria by Hitler and his army in 1938.

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Arrival in the United States

Due to the political-social situation that his country was experiencing, and by extension, much of Europe, Kuhut, who was in In grave danger, he first traveled to England, where he resided for a year and then obtained a visa to emigrate to the United States. United.

Kohut arrived in the United States in 1940, with only 25 cents in his pocket.or, with whom he took a bus to the city of Chicago, where his childhood friend, Siegmund Levarie, who was working at the University of Chicago, lived.

At the beginning of his stay in Chicago, Kohut decided to continue his training in medicine, reaching do residencies in psychiatry and neurology at the same university where your friend worked Levarie.

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Specialization as a psychoanalyst

It is during those first years working as a neurologist and psychiatrist, in the 1940s, when he gradually begins to show greater interest in psychoanalysis.

Thus, He began working with the psychoanalyst Ruth Eissler and also began his career at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis, where he graduated in 1950.

During this decade he married Elizabeth Meyers in 1948 and they both had a son, Thomas August Kohut.

Stage of great growth as a recognized psychoanalyst

In the 1950s, the name of the psychoanalyst Kohut began to sound strongly among his fellow psychoanalysts from the city ​​of Chicago, being highly recognized in its majority, being seen as the most creative figure of the movement in that then.

This stage was very prolific for Kohut. He worked as a professor of psychiatry at the university, while also dedicating himself to his work as a clinical psychoanalyst. All this while he published articles in widely recognized magazines on psychoanalysis; The most popular being an article he published on empathy in 1959.

In this article, Kohut argued the fundamental importance of empathy when conducting psychoanalytic therapy, defining empathy as “vicarious introspection”.

After Kohut's research on empathy, what this concept entails, became for him a essential and elementary tool in his conception of psychoanalysis and psychology at the general.

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His time as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association

In the 1960s, the highlight might be his administrative stint as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, which meant the recognition of a whole working life dedicated to the study and development of psychoanalysis in the broadest sense; he having come to develop new theories and models of therapy based on psychoanalytic theory.

Last years and culminating in your professional career

In this stage he published his most transcendent book, "The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Analysis of the Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders" (The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Analysis of the Treatment of the Narcissistic Personality Disorders), in 1971.

This was a book that came to have a great impact in the field of psychoanalytic theories due to the fact that Kohut extended Freud's theory of narcissism in it.

In 1977 he continued with the theory of the book published in 1971, with the publication of another book entitled "The Restoration of the Self", in which he moved from the narcissism approach to a debate about the Self (self or self), the development of the self, vicissitudes in the development of the self and its tension gradient, called by Kohut as "bipolar self", being an idea that has not transcended too much.

However, in the last years he suffered from cancer for which he had to slow down his work rate in all areas. In addition, he had to undergo bypass surgery in 1979, having to undergo a slow recovery. and, throughout that period, he began to develop inner ear problems, as well as suffered a pneumonia.

Despite the fact that Kohut suffered from very serious health problems, he continued to work until his last days.. In 1981, Kohut was in very poor health. He passed away on October 8 of that year.

Posthumous publications by this author

At the time of his passing, Kohut had a book that he was writing about to finish, titled "How Does Analysis Heal?" (How Does Analysis Cure?). This book was edited by a colleague of his, Arnold Goldberg, and was published in 1984.

In 1985, Charles B. Strozier, published a book with unpublished essays by Heinz Kohut and it was titled "Self Psychology and the Humanities."

In the 90's, two more volumes came to light on a compilation of articles by Kohut, under the name of "Search for the Self", as well as a volume on Kohut's epistolary, edited by Geoffrey Cocks, entitled "The Curve of Life," in 1994.

Next we will see the most essential aspects of the psychoanalytic theory that Kohut developed, throughout his long career, based on the analysis of the “self”.

Heinz Kohut's theory of the Self

The theory developed by Heinz Kohut has been considered as a revolution within the current of psychoanalysis.

Heinz's main contributions have been the concept of the self, his redefinition of narcissism and his vision of empathy or vicarious introspection.

Kohut adopted a positive vision of people that moved away from Freud's vision of the human being in constant division between his drives and continuous internal conflicts. Likewise, Kohut makes a substitution in his psychoanalytic theory of the fundamental concepts of Freudian theory (I, it and superego; conscious and unconscious) by the concepts called Self and the objects of the self.

1. The self

For Kohut the self is constituted as a core concept of the human being's personality, being the place where their experiences pass; which allows giving meaning and coherence to psychological processes or the human psyche.

2. The objects of the self

The objects of the self are made up of the person's experiences of others. For Kohut there are two types of objects:

• Specular: one is reflected in others through the feedback received in interactions with them.
• Idealizers: one internalizes positive qualities of others and adopts them for himself.

3. Narcissism

Regarding narcissism, Unlike Freud who had a negative conception of it, Kohut has an evolutionary view of it.

She understands that in the development of the self, the child needs to receive parental attention and feel like a being special human, so that his parents must heed his call for attention, forming a narcissism cohesive. His parents must also facilitate the help of the child to confront the reality of the limitations that he has.

According to this theory, the problems of narcissism arise when the parents do not help the child correctly in this process, because they are not supportive enough or are very critical of him, resulting in narcissism problematic.

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4. Empathy

As for Kohut's conception of empathy, this approaches Carl Rogers and modern psychology's views on it.

She understands empathy as an ability to understand the thinking and way of feeling of the person in front of her. Therefore, her main idea when treating patients is that the best way to do it is by trying to understand their point of view and the experiences they have.