Heinz Kohut (1913-1981) stood at the center of the twentieth-century psychoanalytic movement. After fleeing his native Vienna when the Nazis took power, he arrived in Chicago, where he spent the rest of his life. He became the most creative figure in the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and is now remembered as the founder of 'self psychology,' whose emphasis on empathy sought to make Freudian psychoanalysis less neutral. Kohut's life invited complexity. He obfuscated his identity as a Jew, negotiated a protean sexuality, and could be surprisingly secretive about his health and other matters. In this biography, Charles Strozier shows Kohut as a paradigmatic figure in American intellectual life: a charismatic man whose ideas embodied the hope and confusions of a country still in turmoil. Inherent in his life and formulated in his work were the core issues of modern America. The years after World War II were the halcyon days of American psychoanalysis, which thrived as one analyst after another expanded upon Freud's insights. The gradual erosion of the discipline's humanism, however, began to trouble clinicians and patients alike. Heinz Kohut took the lead in the creation of the first authentically home-grown psychoanalytic movement. It took an emigre be so distinctly American. Strozier brings to his telling of Kohut's life all the tools of a skillful analyst: intelligence, erudition, empathy, contrary insight, and a willingness to look far below the surface.

ハインツ・コフートの生涯を綴る本作は、単なる伝記を超え、一人の亡命者が「共感」という革命でアメリカ精神分析界を塗り替える魂の軌跡を描きます。著者のストロジャーは、コフートのアイデンティティの葛藤や秘められた内面を冷徹かつ情熱的な筆致で解剖しており、知的刺激に満ちた人間ドラマとして比類なき深みに到達しています。 映像化作品では彼の圧倒的なカリスマ性が鮮烈に視覚化されましたが、本書の真骨頂はテキストでしか描けない思索の密度にあります。映像が映し出すドラマを、活字が心理的深淵から裏打ちし、理論が生まれる瞬間の苦悶を追体験させるのです。メディアを越えた相乗効果が、自己という迷宮に挑んだ天才の真実を浮き彫りにします。