This discussion addresses two aspects of Raanan Kulka's work: (1) his interweaving of philosophy and self psychology and (2) his clinical reliance on the ethics of response to the suffering Other. It also questions, with a hope for further elucidation, his views of idealism and his idealization of quasi-mystical pre-Kohutian Heinz Kohut. This seems to lead him to a confusing rejection of intersubjective systems theory as growing out of what Kohut himself considered his most important work, but which intersubjectivists believe that they developed from philosophical sources.