The Tao of Self Psychology: Was Heinz Kohut a Taoist Sage?

Because humanity is present in the heart, it becomes active as soon as it is affected, just as seeds sprout as soon as they are affected. (Chang Po-Hsing, cited in Hsi, 1175, p. 8)1

When Heinz Kohut died, I was just becoming familiar with his writings and did not yet realize how significantly his mission to integrate introspecting empathy into psychoanalytic work would figure in my own eventhal search to do the same. It was not until my return from training with a Buddhist-Taoist psychotherapy teacher in Korea, many years later, that I truly began to deeply appreciate that, in his search for the infusion of empathy, humility, and humanity into our psychoanalytic treatment of patients, Kohut had led the way for all those in our field seeking to similarly imbue our work with these noble truths.

These highest of human capacities, when intentionally cultivated and integrated in psychoanalysis, are as much rooted in the wisdom of the East as the psychological science of the West. Sometimes such simple truths get lost in translation, or in our various ways of operating in self psychological, relational, and other analytic language, concepts, and techniques. Therefore, in this article, I endeavor to bring empathic ideas more fully to the forefront and examine whether, in conducting his inner and interpersonal exploration of the psychotherapy environment, Kohut functioned as a psychoanalytic Taoist sage for our profession who pointed the way to the future of integrating heart and mind in ourselves as practitioners and consequently in our patients.

In 1957, Kohut presented a paper at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis on the topics of introspection and empathy. In this paper, he pointed out that there might exist in analysts a general resistance against introspection, and especially against an empathic introspection that was reminiscent of Eastern inner reflective and meditative traditions. Kohut (1959), in a published version of his 1957 talk, pointed out:

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