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November 17, 1997
BY JIM RITTER HEALTH REPORTER
He's unknown to the public, but many psychoanalysts consider Chicago's Heinz Kohut one of the greatest explorers of the human psyche since Sigmund Freud.
Kohut's theory of the mind, known as self-psychology, was considered such heresy in the 1970s that colleagues shunned him.
But since Kohut's death in 1981, the Chicago-born school of self-psychology has become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional Freudian psychoanalysis. This past weekend, a record 700 psychoanalysts from around the world came to Chicago to examine Kohut's legacy at the 20th annual International Conference on the Psychology of the Self.
The highlight of the four-day meeting at the Renaissance Chicago Hotel was an address by Kohut's biographer, Charles Strozier, who described Kohut's courageous 10-year battle with cancer.
``People were in tears,'' said psychoanalyst Mark Smaller of the Chicago-based Institute for Psychoanalysis, where Kohut developed his theory.
Freud's revolutionary theories emphasized instinctual drives such as sexual desire and aggression. Central to Freud's theories was a conflict between three parts of the mind: the id, where instinctual drives come from; the ego, where drives are regulated, and the superego, where a person exercises his conscience.
Freud's ideas won wide acceptance. But by the 1960s, many psychoanalysts came to believe that Freud's techniques weren't helping many people. Kohut developed an alternative.
Kohut argued that a person's mental health depends on how empathetic other people are to his needs. Kohut kept many of Freud's ideas, such as Freud's notion that unconscious motives control much behavior. But unlike Freud, Kohut did not emphasize instinctual drives and conflicts among the id, ego and superego.
Psychoanalysts have used Kohut's theories in child therapy, marriage counseling and the treatment of depression, eating disorders and other problems.
``Self-psychology has helped people who were not being helped by traditional forms of psychoanalytic treatment,'' Smaller said.
Like Freud, Kohut was from Vienna, Austria. He came to the United States before World War II to escape Nazi anti-Semitism. Kohut lived in Hyde Park and taught at the University of Chicago and the Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Kohut rose to the top of his field. In the mid-1960s, he was president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He was called ``Mr. Psychoanalysis.''
Kohut introduced his self-psychology theory in his 1971 book, Analysis of the Self. Freudians were outraged.
``People who had been his friends and colleagues would not speak to him,'' Smaller said. ``They felt he had betrayed Freud.''
Around the time his book was published, Kohut learned he had lymphoma, a type of cancer. Because he didn't want his disease to interfere with his relationship with patients, Kohut kept it secret from everyone except his family and two close colleagues.
Kohut did some of his most important work during his decade-long illness. He gave his last lecture three days before he died.
``His contributions are enormous and absolutely deserve to be better known,'' Smaller said.
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