It is my great conviction that the most important issue in psychoanalysis is the empathic reconstruction of the interplay between the personalities of the parents and of the child.—Heinz Kohut, Chicago Institute Lectures

The publication of Kohut's Chicago Institute lectures (1972-1976), for which a large debt is owed to Paul and Marian Tolpin, has provided another chance to assess the contribution of this seminal psychoanalytic thinker. I want to do this in a particular way by asking an almost impossible question: If Kohut had lived longer, what would he be saying and writing today? Would self psychology and its place in contemporary relational psychoanalysis be what it is? Or would it be something quite other? I believe Kohut's pioneering work was not at all finished when he died and that these informal lectures provide some hints about the direction, and even more about the flavor that his thinking might have taken.