This discussion of Charles B. Strozier's “Heinz Kohut and the Meanings of Identity” amplifies Strozier's work by underscoring the history of Austrian antiSemitism that constitutes the background of Kohut's biography and by relating this history to Kohut's self-psychological analysis of religious experience. Kohut's central contribution, the study of narcissism, may be understood as having its origins in Kohut's deep feelings of shame and self-hatred regarding his Jewishness and the vertical splitting and dissociation of this aspect of his religious identity. What made Kohut a great psychoanalytic theorist was his ability to transform his own psychological struggles into a theory and treatment approach that transcended the limitations of his own life and that continues to shed light on the tragic and heroic dimensions of all human experience.