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This book is more than just a tribute to Heinz Kohut, although it is the kind of tribute that any creative scientist would value most. Its central organizing principle is that Kohut's thought and work were of such a character as to set in motion ongoing acts of creation in the field of his investigations and to establish new linkages with other areas of scientific inquiry. The essays are taken from papers delivered at Self Psychology Conferences, in Berkeley in 1981 and in Atlanta in 1982.
A prologue, by Michael Basch, attempts to place Kohut's contributions in historical perspective. This is followed by a group of papers that begin to elaborate and sometimes to question some of the current views about self and selfobject. The next section of the book contains clinical studies of ways in which self psychology can illumine—though not make easy—the work with difficult patients who are not easily understood or influenced by "classical" psychoanalytic approaches. This group of papers includes some fine descriptions of actual work with patients in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
In the concluding section are four papers dealing with applications of self psychology to other areas: assistance to learning-disabled children, certain group processes, Shakespeare's Othello, and, in a most interesting and moving paper, an examination of a lifelong pursuit of a feeling of self marked by safety, wholeness, relatedness, and effectiveness.
The preface concludes, "That Kohut's work has generated lively