These never before published letters of Heinz Kohut, the founder of self psychology, to Jacques Palaci have been selected from over forty letters written by Kohut to Palaci and are the ones most relevant for our understanding of both self psychology and their friendship. Four letters' to Palaci not included in this collection appear in Geoffrey Cocks's The Curve of Life: Correspondence of Heinz Kohut 1923-1981.

Jacques Palaci knew Heinz Kohut when each was studying medicine at the University of Vienna between 1936 and 1938 and their friendship, as manifest in the first letter, was resumed in 1972. They shared interests in music, and, of course, psychoanalysis.

Palaci was president of NPAP from 1959 to 1961, served on its faculty for many years, and was a valued supervisor and training analyst. As M. Moreau-Ricaud (1995) notes in her touching obituary, “the story of his life reads like an Odyssey.”