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I am writing this chapter as a bit of a dinosaur or perhaps a relic of a former era. Once upon a time, in the 1960s and 1970s, I knew Heinz Kohut as an accidental friend and colleague. That description may strike some as self-deprecating, devaluing, and all those other frowned-upon descriptions of one's self-state. Instead, I am deeply grateful that some of the choices that I made early in my personal and professional life resulted in my being included in a small group of friends of Heinz Kohut. My life has been the richer for it in ways that I can only begin to express.
Let me tell you something of the tale itself—with a bow to narrative theory. In the fall of 1968, with more apprehension than you can imagine, I began what would become a 10-year stint as a social worker in the clinic of the Institute for Psychoanalysis of Chicago. The first few months were spent in a haze of unbridled transferences toward every analyst whose path I crossed at 180 North Michigan, including that of Heinz Kohut, whose office was right down the hall from mine and whom I barely knew at all until the following spring. In May of 1969, the spring meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association were held in Miami Beach, Florida; one of the perks of being a social worker at the Institute was the opportunity to attend these meetings, and although I was low person on the totem pole, as it were, it was decided that I was the one to go.