Just from the title, it is clear that Greif’s book on Heinz Kohut
is unusual. Although many books and papers have been written on
Kohut’s theoretical standpoints, therapeutic innovations, and
even his life and correspondence, this one is dedicated to a somewhat
neglected topic. This is a book written by a scientist who obviously
is not a clinician, and it deals with one possible integration
of Kohut’s many — and scattered! — ideas about the modern man’s
position in the world that surrounds him. It is interesting why
Kohut’s followers have developed some other aspects of his theory
down to the minute details, while neglecting this one. It would
be valuable to know why he himself had done the same, although
frequently claiming his passions lie in this field at least equally
as in the field of depth psychology.

Indeed, why Kohut deserves a book like this is not an easy question
to answer. Although he frequently claimed that could he choose
once again he would be a historian and not a psychoanalyst, and
although he often addressed "a self-psychologically informed
historian," he wrote comparatively little on the topic. Only
a handful of his numerous papers are devoted to it, and none of
his three books deals thoroughly with it. Still, quantity is not
all. His ideas, although not expressed as a well-rounded system,
and often left in the form of sketches, brief hypotheses, or associations,
could provide extraordinary inspiration and a starting point for
a careful reader to make explicit Kohut’s unwritten Beyond
‘Civilization and its Discontents’ (to state this rather freely),
just as he himself has continuously tried to get beyond Freud’s
Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

Greif tries to achieve this in a rather short volume of 120 pages,
organized in six chapters. The book can clearly be divided in
two halves, since the first three chapters form one part, and
the last three another. The book is also unusual since the author
uses the endnotes only to provide references, these references
show that in writing this book the author used literally everything
Kohut had ever written. Yet they also show that Greif uses little
else: apart from Kohut and Freud one does not find any references
to psychoanalytic literature (be it pre- or post-Kohutian, so
to say), but also not too much of any other literature either.

The first part of the book is an outline of Kohut’s theory. The
first three chapters are dedicated to the self’s nature, development,
and disintegration, respectively. The majority of the most important
topics are presented: the self is "a structure of self experiences
which is both fundamental and overarching," (p. 1) which
develops through the relationship with self-objects as different
from libidinal objects. Especially important in this development
is the role of empathy as a type of knowledge (vicarious introspection);
the most important mechanisms include optimal frustration and
transmuting (micro)internalization. As for the more clinical
aspects of the theory there is a discussion of various types of
transference, horizontal and vertical splitting, narcissism, disintegration
anxiety. They are all discussed in detail, and the development
of Kohut’s thought is also presented.

The second part of the book brings an effort to connect Kohut’s
theory with different very important topics of social theory.
These chapters are devoted to the discussion of the relationship
between self and culture, and Kohut’s concepts of Guilty Man and
Tragic Man. The author presents the basic ideas of several thinkers
who consider that the most important role of the society is to
provide restraining regulations, Freud being one of the most distinguished
among them. Being himself very critical toward such theories,
the author tries to show that Kohut’s application of self psychology
to social sciences is a solid and meaningful edifice. He first
discusses the Kohut’s notion of the Guilty Man, which is clearly
connected to prevailing psychoanalytic conception of man as dominated
by the conflict between drives, between wish and guilt. Beyond
this, he is very critical of the current social situation in the
Western world. And in the last chapter, he exposes what should
be a step ahead of everything that has already been proposed in
psychoanalysis, and of the way people now live their lives. Life
of the Tragic Man, Kohut believed, and Greif agrees, is not governed
by the pleasure principle, but is devoted to fulfillment of one’s
innermost values, ideals, and ambitions. Current forms of psychopathology
are dominantly in the area of disorders of the self, Kohut thought,
and Greif tries to prove that this is a consequence of the lack
of selfobject support in our civilization, due to its overemphasis
on economic welfare. The book closes with the optimistic belief
that this is going to "diminish rather than increase."

But, we need to mention that besides these fundamental ideas there
are also several things that the author could have used but did
not. First, there are several of Kohut’s very important ideas
he could have used in the first part of the book, which is, I
hold, of a less importance for his endeavor. Among them, he neglected
to discuss Kohut’s idea of multiple selves, which becomes more
and more important after he had first introduced it in the mid
seventies. Then, although he did mention it, he never really accepted
the idea of the self as a configuration, which surely deserves
considerable attention. But there are also several of his
ideas that would be very useful for the second part of the book.
One of them includes the term participating thought. Namely,
Kohut had always thought that the social situation could only
be changed through the interpretation — in analogy with therapeutic
situation. It would be interesting in itself to see how Greif
would discuss the appropriateness of Kohut’s quite frequent use
of analogies between depth psychology and sociology of large groups
as a scientific methodology — coming from a professional who
is not isolated, but who, instead of being active, participates
in the social reality only through thinking about it and having
an insight in its dynamics. Connected to it is his notion of the
group self, literally unmentioned in this book. Then, although
he widely discusses the problem of violence, the author does not
give full use to the Kohut’s notion of chronic narcissistic rage.

We need to mention the most important problems in Greif’s argument.
This book is a kind of "Applied Kohut", but, alas, without
much original contribution. Kohut is used here as a weapon against
individualism as a predominant form of social philosophy and sometimes
against capitalism as ruling ideology, but not as a solid ground
and inspiration for further development of social theory. The
book is completely unaware of modern trends in psychoanalysis
as a whole, and self-psychology in particular, but also of psychoanalytic
theories between Freud and Kohut (and the use of authors such
as Adler, Jung, Sullivan, and Hartmann would be very important
for it). Although it could be understood as a volume for the professional
public that does not consist mainly of depth psychologists, and
so should provide information, sometimes basic, about Kohut’s
theory, one may justifiably ask what is new in all these chapters?
And there could lay their most important problem, since the
answer can only be almost nothing. If you have read Kohut
carefully and extensively, there will not be very much for you
to learn here. And in all these years after the publication of
Kohut’s last, posthumously published, book, self-psychologists
have developed, reshaped, revised, critiqued, and refuted various
aspects of his theory. Although it is published in 2000, this
book’s opening chapters do not show any mark of this.

Unfortunately, there are also a couple of aspects of Kohut’s theory
that were not properly studied by the author of this book. That
is, there are a couple of aspects of Kohut’s theory that were
superficially studied. Let us mention just the most important
among them, and that is the notion of the Tragic Man. Although
Greif discusses it at length and devotes a whole chapter to it,
it seems that his understanding of the Tragic Man (or "Tragic
Self", as he prefers, for partly obscure reasons, unjustified,
it seems, by Kohut’s claim that even the nuclear self is not the
center of the psyche) is fundamentally different from Kohut’s.
His definition (p. 52) that "The Tragic Self is the Individual
which has either failed to achieve adequate self integration,
or which has disintegrated to some degree," is contradictory
to Kohut’s claims that the Tragic Man are fully integrated than
average persons, which enables them to pursue the realization
of their nuclear self more persistently and uncompromisingly.
Just a short quote (from: The Search for the Self. Selected
Writings of Heinz Kohut. P. Ornstein (ed.), International
Universities Press, 1990, Vol. 3) must suffice here: "Man’s
need, therefore, to move toward the realization of his deepest
ambitions and ideals will, as I mentioned earlier, allow him even
to tolerate torture and to accept death… (p. 214) …
[The Tragic Man] may reach a death which in fact is part of the
fulfillment of his nuclear self… (p. 216-7) … Hamlet’s
death is the triumphant fulfillment of his reconstituted nuclear
self, and his weaknesses, hesitations, and temporary failures
are like the climber’s toils and sighs as he struggles to reach
the peak (p. 172)."

This book is better in its overall intention than in its performance.
It is important that we read such a book and discuss it, since
Kohut is almost a unique figure in the psychoanalytic thought
of the last three decades. This book introduces readers who are
not depth psychologists to Kohut’s theory and tries to make connections
between it and various sociological theories and social philosophy.
That feature makes it an almost unique volume in this field, as
far as the last several years are concerned. It is clearly written
and understandable; it could save a lot of the time one would
have to dedicate to reading all of Kohut’s works; it helps psychologists
learn something about fields of knowledge we usually call political
science and sociology.

All in all, the book is a very important and valuable step in
a direction that is rarely considered in contemporary literature.
But it also seems to be an in a way a premature attempt. Our final
verdict on it has to be that it is certainly an important first
step, but not much more than that. We have to hope that the following
ones will be better prepared, but also that future editions of
this book would be conscientiously and thoroughly revised and
enriched.

© 2001 Aleksandar Dimitrijevic

Aleksandar Dimitrijevic,
Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Available from BN.com:
The Tragedy of the Self : Individual and Social Disintegration Viewed through the Self Psychology of Heinz Kohut