Heinz Kohut facts for kids

Heinz Kohut (born May 3, 1913 – died October 8, 1981) was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst. He is famous for creating self psychology. This was a new way of thinking in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy. His ideas changed how many therapists helped people.

Early Life in Vienna

Heinz Kohut was born in Vienna, Austria, on May 3, 1913. His parents were Felix and Else Kohut. He was their only child. His family was Jewish and lived in a part of Vienna called Alsergrund.

His father, Felix, wanted to be a concert pianist. But his experiences in World War I changed his plans. He then went into business. His mother, Else, opened her own shop after the war. This was unusual for women at that time. Else had a very close relationship with her son.

Heinz did not go to school until he was in fifth grade. Before that, he had many private teachers. They made sure he learned French. From 1924, he went to a school called Döblinger Gymnasium. This school was in Grinzing, where his family built a house. At school, he studied Greek and Latin languages. He also read Greek and Roman literature. He learned to love writers like Goethe and Thomas Mann.

In 1929, Heinz spent two months in France to study French. For a school project, he wrote about Euripides’ play The Cyclops. His Latin teacher, who disliked Jewish people, accused him of copying. But his father helped, and the project was accepted.

Heinz started studying medicine at the University of Vienna in 1932. He studied for six years. During this time, he spent six months working in hospitals in Paris. In 1937, his father died from leukemia. After this, Heinz started therapy with a doctor who was not very good. In 1938, he began psychoanalysis with August Aichhorn. August Aichhorn was a close friend of Sigmund Freud.

In March 1938, Hitler’s Germany took over Austria. This made things hard for Heinz because he was Jewish. He still needed to take his final exams. He was allowed to take them after all Jewish professors were removed from the university. The Nazis also took away property from Jewish families. Heinz eventually left Austria. He first went to a refugee camp in Kent, England. Many of his relatives who stayed in Austria were killed in the Holocaust.

In February 1940, Heinz traveled to Boston in the United States. From there, he went to Chicago by bus. A friend from Vienna, Siegmund Levarie, helped him get a visa. Siegmund invited him to Chicago. Heinz’s mother, Else, also moved to Chicago. She opened a shop there.

Starting a New Life in Chicago

Heinz Kohut got his first job at South Shore Hospital in Chicago. In 1941, he started working in neurology at the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital. He worked there until 1948. He became certified in neurology in 1947. Around this time, he chose to join the Unitarian Church.

Heinz was not happy with neurology. He felt it was boring. He spent too much time in the lab and not enough time with people's emotions.

Becoming a Psychoanalyst

Switching to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis

In late 1942, Heinz applied to the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. This institute was started by Franz Alexander in 1932. Heinz was not accepted at first. But he found a smart way to get around this. In March 1943, he started therapy with Ruth Eissler. She was also from Vienna and was a training analyst at the institute. Her husband, Kurt R. Eissler, was also an important analyst.

In 1944, Heinz decided to leave neurology and move into psychiatry. In 1947, he became an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago. He became certified in psychiatry in 1949.

In 1946, he was accepted to the Chicago Institute. He started taking courses right away. By 1949, he was seeing patients regularly. In October 1950, he passed his exams and became an official psychoanalyst. In 1953, he became a training and supervising analyst at the institute.

Unlike some other analysts, Heinz Kohut believed that therapy should take as long as needed for patients to get better. He let the patient lead the sessions. He told one patient, “I will do what I can to help you try and understand yourself.”

His patients often loved him. He helped many people, including other analysts who felt their own training had not been enough.

Teaching Psychoanalysis

Teaching at the institute became very important to Heinz. He quickly became known as a very talented and creative analyst there. He helped rewrite the institute's courses. For ten years, he taught a two-year course on psychoanalytic theory. This course was very focused on Sigmund Freud's ideas.

Heinz was known for his brilliant teaching style. However, some people felt his brilliance made students too passive. They thought it did not encourage students to think for themselves.

Heinz believed that analysts should be like scientists. They should not just follow a set of rules. He worried that if they did, psychoanalysis would lose its unique value.

Leading in Psychoanalysis

Heinz Kohut was very active in the American Psychoanalytic Association starting in the 1950s. He was on the board of a major journal. In the 1960s, he became a top leader in the organization. He served as secretary, president-elect, and then president from 1964 to 1965. This strengthened his friendships with Kurt and Ruth Eissler, and with Heinz Hartmann.

Being president was a lot of work. He had to prepare many meetings and solve problems within the association. For example, there was a debate about whether analysts should talk publicly about the mental health of politicians.

At this time, Heinz was a strong supporter of traditional Freudian analysis. He was careful not to do anything that seemed to go against traditional ideas. He joked that in the 1950s and early 1960s, he was “Mr. Psychoanalysis.”

During this time, Heinz met all the important people in psychoanalysis worldwide. One of the most important was Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter. They met in 1964 and wrote to each other often.

In 1966, the University of Chicago gave Anna Freud an honorary degree. Heinz may have suggested this idea. When she came to Chicago, she stayed with the Kohuts. This visit was a big success for Heinz.

Over time, Heinz felt that his leadership roles took too much energy. He wanted to develop his own ideas. He also started to have mixed feelings about classical analysis. He felt that the science of psychoanalysis was good, but some people practicing it were too self-centered. He said this experience taught him a lot about narcissism.

After being president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Heinz was elected vice-president of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) in 1965. In 1968, Anna Freud encouraged him to run for president of this worldwide organization. However, it became clear that European members preferred another candidate. Anna Freud advised him not to run to avoid losing. Heinz withdrew from the race. He told his colleagues that the presidency would interfere with his creative work. Many people believed him. If he had been elected, his first major book, The Analysis of the Self, might have been his only big contribution.

A Writer in Psychoanalysis

Early Writings

Starting in 1946, Heinz’s friend Siegmund Levarie organized concerts at the University of Chicago. In 1947, the audience's reaction to music by Béla Bartók inspired Heinz. He wrote an article about the psychology of music. It was published in 1950. Also in 1947, Heinz started thinking about Thomas Mann’s story Death in Venice. He wrote about it in 1950 but waited to publish it until after Mann died in 1955. It was published in 1957.

On Empathy

Heinz Kohut's first truly important scientific work was his 1959 article on empathy. It was called "Introspection, Empathy, and Psychoanalysis: An Examination of the Relationship Between Mode of Observation and Theory." He wrote it for a meeting in Chicago in 1957 and presented it in Paris that same year.

This topic is about how one person can understand the feelings of another. Sigmund Freud had only mentioned empathy briefly. Heinz took the idea and explained it deeply. He showed what kinds of things can be understood with empathy and what cannot. He said that things we can understand through empathy are psychological (about our inner life). Things we cannot understand with empathy are physical and need our senses.

His paper was well-received in Chicago. But at first, a journal turned it down. They said it challenged psychoanalytic theory too much. After someone argued that the journal should not censor ideas, they published it in 1959.

Applied Psychoanalysis

In 1960, Heinz published an article called “Beyond the Bounds of the Basic Rule. Some Recent Contributions to Applied Psychoanalysis.” In it, he looked at four recent books that used psychoanalysis to study people's lives:

• Phyllis Greenacre: Swift and Carroll, A Psychoanalytic Study of Two Lives (1955)
• Edward Hirschmann: Great Men: Psychoanalytic Studies (1955)
• Ida Macalpine and Richard A. Hunter, (ed.): Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of my Nervous Illness (1955)
• Editha Sterba and Richard Sterba: Beethoven and his Nephew. A Psychoanalytic Study of their Relationship (1954)

Heinz listed three challenges when using psychoanalysis to study art or artists:

• The person studying must know a lot about both psychoanalysis and the art form.
• The study is done outside of a therapy session. So, the artist cannot freely share their thoughts. Also, the artist might have shown a false image of themselves in their art.
• Sometimes, these studies just try to show how important psychoanalysis is. They might not truly help understand the art itself.

On Courage

The article called “On Courage” was published after Heinz died, in 1985. It is considered one of his most personal writings. In it, he looked at the actions of Franz Jägerstätter, Hans, and Sophie Scholl. These people bravely resisted Hitler’s rule in Germany. They were willing to die for their beliefs. Heinz said these people were not crazy. He believed they showed a deeper truth. Their values gave them no other choice but to stand against the Nazis.

Mitscherlich Laudation

In October 1969, Heinz was invited to speak in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He spoke about the psychological problems of the German people after World War II. He was chosen to give a speech when Alexander Mitscherlich received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Mitscherlich was a doctor and psychoanalyst. He wrote popular books about Germany's guilt concerning World War II and the Holocaust. Heinz’s main idea was that Mitscherlich had used the idea of helping one person to help a whole population heal. The audience included the German President, Gustav Heinemann. The speech was broadcast live to millions of people.

Developing Self Psychology

After World War II and the Holocaust, traditional Freudian analysis focused on individual guilt. But people were struggling with new issues like identity and meaning. Heinz Kohut at first tried to stick to traditional ideas. He saw the "self" as separate from the ego. But later, he disagreed with Freud's ideas about the id, ego, and superego. He then developed his own ideas around what he called the "tripartite self" (three-part self).

According to Heinz, this three-part self can only grow when a person's needs are met by others. These needs include feeling worthy and well. Unlike traditional psychoanalysis, which focused on inner conflicts, self psychology emphasized the importance of relationships.

Heinz showed his interest in how we develop our "sense of self" by studying narcissism. He believed that if a person acts narcissistic, it can help them hide feelings of low self-esteem. By talking highly of themselves, they can try to get rid of feelings of worthlessness.

The Self Psychology Movement

How it Started

Most of Heinz Kohut's fellow analysts did not like his new ideas. However, younger analysts were very interested. These included Arnold Goldberg, Michael Franz Basch, Paul Ornstein, Anna Ornstein, Paul Tolpin, Marian Tolpin, and Ernest Wolf.

Arnold Goldberg became a central figure in this new group. Paul Ornstein became the editor of Heinz’s collected writings. Michael Franz Basch was a very original thinker, but he stayed on the edges of the group.

The group first met in Heinz’s apartment. They discussed his book manuscript, which would become The Analysis of the Self. They had nine meetings in 1969. The group found the manuscript difficult. Their comments convinced Heinz to write a new beginning for the book. This became the first chapter, called “Introductory Considerations.” Some people felt this new chapter made the book even harder to understand.

See also

In Spanish: Heinz Kohut para niños