The Search for the Self. Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut: 1950-1978. Paul H. Ornstein, Ed. New York:  International Universities Press, 1978. Two volumes,  vii + vii + 969 pp.

A reviewer of this collection spanning twenty-eight years of selected writings would appear disadvantaged. However, familiarity with the scope and sweep of Kohut's central issue provides a perspective on the development of his now well known psychology of the self, and promises an unprecedented opportunity for evaluating that revolutionary theory within the context of its classical roots.

Our task of integrating Kohut's ideas as they have evolved is simplified by Paul Ornstein's comprehensive introduction which classifies the work according to three major periods clustering around three nodal points. The first period, (1950-1959), culminates in the nodal point of the important work, Introspection, Empathy, and Psychoanalysis, which contains most of the themes to emerge and be synthesized in later works. This period also includes papers with novel and astute observations in the applied psychoanalysis of literature and music, and various papers on clinical theory and metapsychology which emphasize heavily the psychoeconomic point of view. The second period (1960-1965) embraces the second and third nodal points. The second point is epitomized by Beyond the Bounds of the Basic Rule, a 1960 paper which advocates the lifting of psychoanalysis out of its purely clinical context by applying it to a host of subject matters. The third nodal point focuses on developmental issues and on postulating those narcissistic structures and transferences which are central in the evolution of Kohut's psychoanalytic psychology of the self. The third period (1966-1977) develops and expands that psychology of the self with contributions to theory and technique.