My life with self psychology.
In this very personal writing, I describe my experiences with self psychology in general and with Heinz Kohut in particular, from its beginnings in the early 1970s until Kohut's death and my own subsequent development. The discovery of self psychology in the context of my beginnings as a new, rather disillusioned, candidate in a classical institute affiliated with the American Psychoanalytic Association is described, with the sense of relief that comes with finding a theoretical perspective that matched my own views about human beings. My experiences as a member of the small study group that met in Chicago under the leadership of Kohut, what that was like for me, and how I came to both grow under his influence and then to find my own voice from within that influence forms the majority of this essay of deep appreciation for Kohut the man and Kohut the founder of a psychoanalytic theory.
Shane
Estelle
E
Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90025, USA. estelleshane@worldnet.att.net
D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D015141:Los Angeles; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000266:history; D019455:Self Psychology