Heinz Kohut

1. Introduction

Heinz Kohut (1913–1981) was an Austrian‑born American psychoanalyst whose work transformed postwar psychoanalysis by centering the concept of the self rather than instinctual drives. Initially a leading figure in orthodox Freudian ego psychology, he developed what later came to be known as self psychology, a systematic attempt to explain development, psychopathology, and psychoanalytic cure in terms of the formation and maintenance of a cohesive self.

Kohut is best known for his reconceptualization of narcissism. Against the prevailing view that narcissism was primarily a regressive, morally tinged self‑love, he argued that it represents a normal developmental line, crucial to ambitions, ideals, and self‑esteem. Disorders such as narcissistic personality disturbance were, in his account, not simply conflicts of drives but disorders of the self arising from failures in early relationships.

A central innovation was his idea of selfobjects: people (or ideals and institutions) experienced as performing vital functions for the self, rather than as fully separate “objects.” Kohut located psychological health in the availability and internalization of such selfobject functions. Correspondingly, he elevated empathy from a clinical attitude to the primary method of inquiry into subjective experience, arguing that psychoanalysis is grounded in “vicarious introspection.”

Philosophically, Kohut’s theories contributed to relational and intersubjective accounts of selfhood, and to debates about empathy, recognition, and narrative identity. Within psychoanalysis, his work opened influential discussions about technique with severely disturbed patients and stimulated new schools of thought, while also provoking substantial criticism and controversy.

2. Life and Historical Context

Viennese Origins and Interwar Psychoanalysis

Kohut was born in 1913 in Vienna, a major center of early psychoanalysis. He grew up in a middle‑class Jewish family and was exposed to the city’s dense cultural and intellectual milieu. The prominence of Freud and his circle in interwar Vienna formed the background against which Kohut’s medical and early psychiatric interests emerged, even though he did not initially train directly within the psychoanalytic movement.

Exile, Emigration, and American Training

The Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 forced Kohut, like many Jewish professionals, to flee. This abrupt displacement, which biographical commentators often link to his later concerns with continuity and rupture of the self, led eventually to his emigration to the United States. He completed his medical education at the University of Chicago, receiving an M.D. in 1944 and entering psychiatry and psychoanalytic training in a context shaped by American ego psychology and World War II–era psychiatry.

Postwar American Psychoanalysis

In postwar Chicago, Kohut became integrated into a psychoanalytic culture dominated by drive theory, structural models of id‑ego‑superego, and an emphasis on adaptation to reality. The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis was a key node in the institutional consolidation of psychoanalysis in the United States, and Kohut rose through its ranks while the discipline enjoyed wide cultural influence in psychiatry, social thought, and the humanities.

Institutional Prominence and Historical Setting

By the 1950s and early 1960s, Kohut was a prominent representative of mainstream American psychoanalysis, culminating in his presidency of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1964–1965). His subsequent theoretical departures took place against a backdrop of broader intellectual shifts: critiques of classical Freudianism, the rise of humanistic psychology, and increasing attention to severe personality disorders and narcissistic pathologies in postwar clinical practice. These historical forces provided both the clinical impetus and the institutional tension within which self psychology emerged.

3. Intellectual Development

From Classical Formation to Ego Psychology

Kohut’s early intellectual development followed the trajectory of a classically trained physician moving into mid‑century psychoanalysis. After medical studies in Vienna and Chicago, he underwent psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Institute, where ego psychology was the dominant orientation. In this phase, he worked within the drive‑conflict model, focusing on defenses, adaptation, and the structural differentiation of id, ego, and superego.

Leadership within Orthodoxy

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Kohut elaborated clinical and theoretical contributions that were fully compatible with mainstream Freudian thinking. Through teaching, supervising, and holding leadership positions—including the presidency of the American Psychoanalytic Association—he helped codify standards of technique and training. At the same time, colleagues later retrospectively emphasized his unusual sensitivity to patients’ affective nuances and fragility, which some see as foreshadowing his later shift.

Turning to Narcissism and the Self

In the mid‑1960s, intensive work with patients suffering from chronic emptiness, grandiosity, and fragile self‑esteem led him to question whether existing theory adequately captured their difficulties. His 1966 paper “Forms and Transformations of Narcissism” marks a pivotal stage: here he proposed a distinct developmental line of narcissism, differentiating it from object‑love and suggesting that narcissistic phenomena could be normal as well as pathological.

This theoretical reorientation culminated in The Analysis of the Self (1971), where Kohut presented a systematic account of narcissistic personality disorders in terms of disrupted self development. He introduced concepts such as the grandiose self, idealized parent imago, and selfobjects, signaling a move away from drive theory toward a psychology of the self.

Mature Self Psychology

In the 1970s, Kohut further refined his model, elaborating the structure of the self and the mechanisms of therapeutic change in works like The Restoration of the Self (1977) and his later writings. In this mature phase, he increasingly emphasized empathy as a mode of observation and began to engage more explicitly—though often implicitly and unsystematically—with philosophical questions about subjectivity, meaning, and intersubjectivity. Commentators sometimes divide his development into these broad phases:

4. Major Works and Key Texts

Forms and Transformations of Narcissism (1966)

This journal article is often regarded as the conceptual bridge between ego psychology and self psychology. Kohut reinterprets narcissism as a normal developmental line, distinguishing healthy forms from pathological fixations. He introduces the idea that narcissistic investments can be transformed into mature ambitions and ideals, laying groundwork for later notions of self‑cohesion and selfobjects.

The Analysis of the Self (1971)

Subtitled “A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders,” this book is the founding document of self psychology. It presents detailed case material to argue that certain patients cannot be understood within a drive‑conflict framework. Key concepts include the grandiose self, idealized parent imago, and mirror and idealizing transferences. The text systematically links these clinical phenomena to a broader theory of the self.

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“The patient’s need is not to be interpreted away but to be understood and responded to as an expression of his striving toward self‑cohesion.”

— Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (1971)

The Restoration of the Self (1977)

Here Kohut offers a more fully articulated structural theory of the self and its disorders. He argues that the self is the central organizing agency of the psyche, elaborates types of self‑pathology, and discusses how therapeutic action occurs through transformational internalization of selfobject functions. The book clarifies his departure from classical structural theory and extends his developmental model.

How Does Analysis Cure? (posthumous, 1984)

Compiled from lectures and drafts near the end of his life, this work focuses on mechanisms of therapeutic change. Kohut emphasizes empathic immersion as the analyst’s primary tool, distinguishes empathy as a method from the curative factors it makes possible, and further explores how internalization of selfobject experiences restores cohesion and vigor to the self.

The Search for the Self (1978, and subsequent volumes)

This multi‑volume collection gathers papers written between 1950 and 1978. It documents Kohut’s evolution from orthodox analyst to founder of self psychology, providing important context for his major books and tracing the gradual emergence of his core concepts.

5. Core Ideas of Self Psychology

The Self as Central Organizing Principle

Kohut proposed that the self, rather than instinctual drives, is the primary organizer of psychological life. The self is conceived as a cohesive, enduring configuration of experience that gives a person a sense of continuity, vitality, and direction. Disruptions in this cohesion underlie many forms of psychopathology, especially those involving emptiness, fragmentation, or unstable self‑esteem.

Selfobjects and Selfobject Needs

A defining idea is that people, groups, and ideals may function as selfobjects—experienced not as wholly separate others but as extensions performing crucial functions for the self (affirming, calming, ideal‑providing). Children, and later adults, have enduring selfobject needs, such as:

• Mirroring: being admired and confirmed in one’s sense of worth.
• Idealization: being able to look up to a calm, powerful other.
• (In later formulations) Twinship/alter ego needs: feeling essentially alike with another.

Adequate, empathic selfobject responses foster a cohesive self; chronic failures contribute to self disorders.

Developmental Lines of Narcissism

Kohut distinguished between object‑love and narcissistic lines of development. Healthy narcissism, expressed in ambitions and ideals, stems from the maturation of early narcissistic structures: the grandiose self (aspirations for greatness and exhibitionism) and the idealized parent imago (experience of an all‑good, powerful other). Psychopathology arises when these structures remain archaic or fragmented due to developmental disruptions.

Psychopathology as Disorders of the Self

Rather than viewing symptoms primarily as compromises between drives and defenses, Kohut described many clinical conditions—especially narcissistic personality disorders and related states—as structural weaknesses in the self. Manifestations such as grandiosity, hypersensitivity to shame, or chronic emptiness are interpreted as attempts to shore up threatened self‑cohesion.

Transformational Internalization and Cure

Therapeutic change occurs, in this model, when empathic selfobject experiences offered in the analytic relationship are gradually internalized, a process Kohut termed transformational internalization. Over time, functions once provided by external selfobjects become stable inner capacities (for self‑soothing, self‑esteem regulation, and sustaining ideals), leading to “restoration of the self.”

6. Methodology and the Role of Empathy

Empathy as Vicarious Introspection

Kohut placed empathy (Einfühlung) at the center of psychoanalytic methodology. He described it as vicarious introspection: the analyst’s imaginative, disciplined effort to enter the patient’s subjective world while maintaining reflective distance. For Kohut, empathy is primarily an epistemic tool, a mode of observation that yields reliable knowledge of inner experience.

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“The analyst’s empathy is not a curative factor in itself; it is the mode of observation of the analyst.”

— Heinz Kohut, How Does Analysis Cure? (1984)

Distinguishing Empathy from Sympathy or Warmth

Kohut explicitly differentiated empathy from mere sympathy, emotional contagion, or general kindness. While genuine concern may accompany empathic understanding, the methodological core is accurate, nuanced grasp of the patient’s inner life. Proponents argue that this distinction allowed Kohut to preserve a scientific ambition for psychoanalysis grounded in systematic observation of subjective phenomena.

Empathic Immersion and Clinical Technique

Methodologically, Kohut advocated an analytic stance of empathic immersion followed by interpretive reflection. The analyst first attempts to feel and articulate how the patient experiences self and others, including archaic selfobject transferences (e.g., demands to be admired or idealized). Interpretations are then framed in ways that recognize these experiences as expressions of selfobject needs and vulnerabilities, rather than as simply defenses or resistances.

Empathy and the Curative Process

Although he denied that empathy is curative “by itself,” Kohut argued that empathic understanding creates conditions under which transformational internalization can occur. Accurate empathic responses allow patients to experience the analyst as a reliable selfobject, leading over time to increased self‑cohesion and more realistic ambitions and ideals. In his later work, he also suggested that patients’ experience of being deeply understood has intrinsic psychological value, though he continued to tie this value to structural change rather than to momentary emotional relief.

7. Philosophical Themes: Self, Intersubjectivity, and Identity

Relational Selfhood and Intersubjectivity

Kohut’s notion that the self depends on selfobject relations has been interpreted as a relational or intersubjective conception of subjectivity. On this view, selves are not self‑sufficient units but are constituted and sustained by ongoing relationships in which others function as part of the self’s psychological structure. Philosophers and psychoanalytic theorists have linked this to broader currents emphasizing recognition, mutuality, and dependence.

Identity, Continuity, and Fragility

Kohut’s focus on self‑cohesion contributes to discussions of personal identity that prioritize experiential continuity over logical or purely cognitive criteria. Disorders of the self—marked by fragmentation, emptiness, or discontinuity—illustrate how identity may be experienced as unstable even when memory and agency remain intact. Some commentators use Kohut’s clinical descriptions to argue that identity is a narrative and affective achievement, reliant on supportive relational contexts.

Empathy and the Epistemology of Other Minds

By treating empathy as the basic tool for understanding psychological reality, Kohut entered debates about how one gains knowledge of other minds. Proponents see his work as aligning with phenomenological accounts, where grasping another’s experience involves imaginative participation rather than inference from behavior alone. Critics, however, question whether empathic understanding can claim the objectivity or reliability that Kohut sometimes attributed to it.

Narcissism, Self‑Concern, and Ethics

Kohut’s revaluation of narcissism as a normal and necessary dimension of development has ethical implications. It suggests that adequate self‑regard and stable self‑esteem are preconditions for mature responsibility and concern for others. Philosophers of ethics and care theory have drawn on this to argue that moral agency presupposes a sufficiently cohesive self, while also exploring tensions between self‑concern and altruism in Kohutian terms.

Autonomy, Dependence, and Internalization

The concept of transformational internalization offers a nuanced account of how external relations become inner structures. Autonomy, on this view, is not independence from others but the product of successfully internalized selfobject functions. This has influenced relational and feminist theories of autonomy that stress embeddedness and dependence as conditions for, rather than threats to, self‑determination.

8. Impact on Psychoanalysis and Related Disciplines

Within Psychoanalysis

Kohut’s work significantly reshaped late 20th‑century psychoanalysis, particularly in North America. It:

• Provided a systematic framework for understanding narcissistic and borderline conditions, which many clinicians had found difficult to treat with classical methods.
• Contributed to the emergence of self‑psychological schools and training programs, especially centered in Chicago and later spread internationally.
• Influenced the broader relational and intersubjective movements in psychoanalysis, which, while distinct, drew on his emphasis on mutual influence, subjectivity, and the clinical centrality of the relationship.

Some institutes adopted self psychology as a primary orientation; others integrated Kohutian ideas into eclectic or pluralistic curricula.

Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology, and Psychotherapy

In psychiatry and clinical psychology, Kohut’s reconceptualization of narcissistic personality disorders informed diagnostic thinking and treatment planning, especially for patients characterized by fragility, shame, and grandiosity. His ideas contributed to the expansion of psychodynamic psychotherapy beyond classical neuroses to include personality disorders and chronic self‑disturbances.

Techniques emphasizing empathic attunement, recognition of selfobject needs, and support for self‑cohesion influenced a wide range of practitioners, including many who did not identify strictly as psychoanalysts.

Broader Humanistic and Interdisciplinary Influence

Kohut’s writings resonated with currents in humanistic psychology, emphasizing growth, authenticity, and the importance of validating subjective experience. Scholars in philosophy, theology, literary studies, and ethics have used his concepts to analyze themes of selfhood, recognition, and fragmentation in texts and cultural phenomena.

His ideas also intersected with family therapy and developmental psychology, particularly in discussions of parental mirroring, idealization, and the development of self‑esteem, though empirical researchers have varied in the extent to which they adopt his specific terminology.

International Reception

Internationally, self psychology has had particular impact in North America, parts of Europe (such as Germany and Scandinavia), and Israel. In some regions it has remained more marginal compared to object‑relations or Lacanian perspectives. The diversity of receptions has contributed to ongoing debates about how best to integrate Kohut’s contributions into a pluralistic psychoanalytic field.

9. Criticisms and Debates

Drive Theory and Classical Analysts

Many classical analysts argued that Kohut underestimated the role of drives, conflict, and sexuality. They contended that phenomena he labeled as disorders of the self could still be explained within a drive‑conflict framework, and that his focus on self‑cohesion risked neglecting unconscious aggression and Oedipal dynamics. Some saw his approach as a “de‑conflictualization” of psychoanalysis that diluted its metapsychological core.

Concerns about Technique and Regression

Critics also questioned whether Kohut’s emphasis on empathic responsiveness and tolerance of archaic selfobject transferences might encourage excessive regression, idealization of the analyst, or dependence, potentially compromising analytic neutrality. Debates arose over how and when to interpret, and whether Kohutian technique sufficiently addressed resistance, transference neurosis, and the working through of conflict.

Empathy and Scientific Status

Philosophically and methodologically, some commentators challenged Kohut’s elevation of empathy as the primary mode of observation. Skeptics argued that empathic understanding is highly subjective and vulnerable to projection and confirmation bias, raising questions about its reliability as a scientific tool. They suggested that Kohut’s claims sometimes overreached, presenting empathy as more objective or error‑free than is warranted.

Relation to Other Relational Theories

Within post‑Freudian developments, there have been debates about how self psychology relates to object‑relations theory, interpersonal psychoanalysis, and relational psychoanalysis. Some theorists emphasize convergences around intersubjectivity and the centrality of relationships; others highlight differences, such as Kohut’s retention of a relatively unitary concept of the self versus more multiplicity‑oriented models (e.g., multiple self‑states).

Cultural and Ethical Critiques

Cultural critics have questioned whether Kohut’s positive appraisal of narcissism and central concern with self‑esteem reflect and perhaps reinforce late‑modern individualism. Some argue that self psychology risks pathologizing socially produced distress (e.g., marginalization, inequality) as individual self‑disorders, while others see in Kohut’s model resources for critiquing social environments that fail to provide adequate recognition.

Internal Debates within Self Psychology

Subsequent self‑psychological writers have debated the scope and limits of Kohut’s original formulations—for example, whether self psychology applies primarily to narcissistic conditions or to all psychopathology; how to conceptualize aggression; and how explicitly to integrate cultural, gender, and societal factors. These internal debates have generated a range of neo‑Kohutian and integrative positions.

10. Legacy and Historical Significance

Reorientation of Psychoanalytic Focus

Kohut is widely regarded as a central figure in the “relational turn” of late 20th‑century psychoanalysis. By positing the self and its relationships to selfobjects as primary, he helped shift attention from drive satisfaction and conflict to issues of self‑cohesion, vulnerability, and recognition. This reorientation has had lasting effects on how analysts conceptualize personality disorders and therapeutic action.

Influence on Clinical Practice

In clinical practice, Kohut’s ideas contributed to a broadening of psychoanalytic work to include patients once considered “untreatable” by classical standards—those with severe narcissistic and borderline pathologies. Techniques emphasizing empathic attunement, recognition of selfobject needs, and support for the patient’s fragile self‑structure are now common elements in many psychodynamic approaches, even among clinicians who do not identify as self psychologists.

Integration into Pluralistic Psychoanalysis

Historically, self psychology moved from being a controversial “heretical” position to one component of a pluralistic psychoanalytic landscape. Contemporary training programs often present Kohut alongside object‑relations, interpersonal, Lacanian, and relational theories. His concepts—“selfobject,” “narcissistic injury,” “self‑cohesion”—have entered the wider psychoanalytic vocabulary as reference points in ongoing theoretical discussions.

Cross‑Disciplinary Resonance

Beyond psychoanalysis, Kohut’s work has contributed to broader intellectual conversations about selfhood, empathy, and recognition in philosophy, theology, and the humanities. His clinical descriptions of fragmentation, emptiness, and the search for validating others have been used to interpret cultural phenomena associated with modern and late‑modern forms of subjectivity.

Continuing Debates and Revisions

Kohut’s legacy is also marked by persistent debates over the balance between self and drive, the nature of empathy, and the relationship between individual psychology and social context. Subsequent theorists have revised, expanded, or critiqued his formulations, ensuring that self psychology remains a living, evolving tradition rather than a closed system. Historically, this ongoing engagement attests to Kohut’s enduring significance as a major reinterpreter of psychoanalysis in the second half of the 20th century.