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In the absence of a biography of Heinz Kohut this collection of letters from his private correspondence is a welcome but partial resource for those who wish to know more about the man behind possibly the most controversial revision in contemporary psychoanalysis. The letters themselves are interesting, and so is editor (and historian) Geoffrey Cocks's lucid and well-written introduction. This collection does not overlap with Ornstein's (1978, 1991) four-volume compilation of Kohut's clinical and theoretical works which includes a significant number of letters. There is plenty more here for the reader hungry for “important” material. But in addition, the cumulative impact of this generally more personal correspondence allows the reader a richer and more intimate glimpse of Kohut's life: an opportunity to empathize, as he might have put it, with his everyday as well as with his professional concerns in a way that has not previously been possible.
According to the dust jacket, this book includes “[o]ver 300 never-before-published letters, drawn from Kohut's private files and from colleagues…” and covers a span from the 1920s to his death in 1981. Specifically, it is a collection of letters (and some replies) to colleagues, friends and family, responses to critics and fans, and a variety of miscellaneous communications, for example, to a newspaper editor, a senator, or his dining club, motivated by some current sense of urgency. Not included are letters to, from or about Kohut's patients (which Cocks tells us were destroyed on Kohut's instruction at the time of his death) or any previously published correspondence.
It is hard to say, in so heterogeneous a compilation, just what will be of most interest to readers of this book. But it is easy to report that most of these letters make for stimulating and surprisingly easy reading. It would do no service to compare Kohut's