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Few biographers have been as adept at using psychoanalytic theory to inform biography writing as historian Dr. Charles B. Strozier. Author of Lincoln's Quest for Union: A Psychological Portrait and Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America, two among many published works, Strozier was privileged with the opportunity to become intimately familiar with the influential work of Viennese-born . From 1982 to 2001, Strozier immersed himself in Kohut's professional and private life, producing an impressive biography entitled Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst . This work was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
This evening's scientific meeting centered on Strozier's subjective experience as Kohut's biographer. In his presentation, Strozier discussed his own fascinating psychoanalytic process throughout this project. He not only clearly conveyed Kohut's revolutionary theories, but also highlighted his own radical ideas about biography writing. Strozier stated: “Nothing has changed biography in the past century more than psychoanalysis itself…. The imperative of psychoanalysis forces the biographer to include the public and private, the work and the life.” This transition in biography writing mirrored the American cultural shift and Kohut's theoretical transition from the self in isolation to the self as embedded in relationships. The complex task of discovering, uncovering, and making sense of the subject's work through the biographer's own experience was the framework within which Strozier examined Kohut's life.
Although Strozier was only distantly acquainted with Kohut through familial and professional ties at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, he embarked on Kohut's biography just 6 months after the man's death. Strozier interviewed friends, colleagues, patients, supervisees, and family and was met with “enthusiastic support to guarded caution to outright opposition.” Between 1986 and 1994, Strozier himself became the target of much collegial c