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Psychoanalysts and historians of psychoanalytic ideas are indebted to Philip Rubovits-Seitz for publishing his notes on Heinz Kohut's two-year theory course at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. Kohut reviewed these notes with Seitz, authenticating that they faithfully reflected what he conveyed in his lectures. These notes are of interest to me because I attended these lectures in 1960/61 and 1961/62 and
could, on reading the notes, almost hear Kohut's delivery. Thus was my reading informed by my experience of Kohut's intense immersion in, his profound grasp of, Freud's ideas. He spoke not about them but from within them, since he lived these ideas. That vivid memory reanimated for me this inescapably “bloodless,” however clear and accurate, condensation. Indeed, it must be said that the notes are fully understandable only by those already steeped in Freud's ideas. What the text does convey, clearly and compellingly, is how far our field has developed (even in the now mythical mainstream of the American Psychoanalytic Association) since Kohut taught Freudian theory.
The book is divided into four parts. Part I, “Kohut's Lectures on Psychoanalytic Psychology” (34 chapters) presents the notes taken by Rubovits-Seitz. Part II, “Concepts and Theories of Psychoanalysis,” reprints a synthesis of the lectures prepared by Kohut and Rubovits-Seitz in 1963 for inclusion in a textbook. Part III, “Kohut's Method of Synthesizing Freudian Theory,” is a detailed assessment of that subject. Finally, in Part IV Rubovits-Seitz presents his views of Kohut's thinking under the rubric “Kohut's Concepts of Narcissism and Self Psychology: Continuities with Freudian Theory.” I will comment briefly on each of the four parts and then discuss Rubovits-Seitz's views of Kohut's Freudian vision from my own current perspective.
Part I. The notes, meticulously formulated, focus on the key issues of each lecture and present a coherent view of Freud's contributions. These notes may serve know