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With Mr. Z I have an almost familial connection, alphabetically speaking, since Dr. Kohut published my own case history two years earlier as Mr. W. It is good that Mrs. Y., a female patient, stands between me and Mr. Z. in Kohut's book, because her presence protects me from a resurgence of my homosexual transference to my former analyst. I agree completely with Charles Strozier that in 1977 Mr. Z. leaped full-blown from the forebrain of Heinz Kohut, like Juno from the forehead of Zeus. In 1979 Mr. Z found his printed resting place in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, although his progenitor lived until 1981, when Kohut found his own final resting place.
My paper has two goals: (1) to offer a few reminiscences that add to the probability-verging on certainty-that Mr. Z is Dr. Kohut, and (2) to support forcefully Charles Strozier's (1999) contention that Kohut's presentation of “The Two Analyses of M. Z” is a “Use of Case Material,” and not an “abuse.”
Although Dr. Strozier's view of Kohut's creation of Mr. Z is generally positive, he does reveal a few pieces of his private moral self through the sharp dichotomy in the words through which he depicts Kohut's behavior. On the side of angels read the words “moving,” “appealing,” “noble,” and “clinically rich” applied to the case. On the side of the devil, note his use of the words “sophism,” “abuse,” “faking a case,” “smoke screen,” “pure autobiography,” and finally his comment that “lying was not alien to Kohut.” My remarks will pertain only to the last two topics-to “lying” and to autobiography.
Let me start with the paper about Mr. Z, which I reread again after many years away from my initial deep immersion in