The existentialist theories of self proposed by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Heidegger are the most important philosophical understandings of the self in modern Western literature. The most compelling psychological concept of the self ever developed is that of Heinz Kohut. While both theories hold that the assertion of one’s unique singular self is the essence of a vitalized life, their understandings of the self, its greatest enemies, and what it needs to flourish are starkly different. What this paper proposes is a way to integrate their key ideas around the idea of living tragically, of living as a vulnerable mortal thrown into a seemingly meaningless universe, hoping to assert one’s personal ideals in a world that seeks only an adoption of its generalized codes and values. That is, I propose to develop an Existentialist Self Psychology.1