OEDIPUS VS. NARCISSUS; by Susan Quinn
Published: June 30, 1981
Illustrations: photo of Heinz Kohut
Freud leave on the first leg of his flight from the Nazis. Though Kohut was an admirer, he had not met the master, but when the student tipped his hat in farewell as the train moved out, Freud tipped his own hat in return. ''I had the feeling,'' Kohut remembers, ''of a crumbling universe.''
Susan Quinn, is a freelance writer who reports frequently about the social sciences. By Susan Quinn he first parting of the ways took place more than four decades ago. Heinz Kohut, a 25-year-old medical student, stood on the platform of the railroad station in Vienna in 1938 and watched SigmundThe second parting has occurred more gradually, over the last 15 years, yet it has not lacked for drama. The student has, in significant ways, strayed from the teachings of the master. And the impact of Kohut's dissent, coming at a time when psychoanalysis itself is vulnerable, may have reverberations far beyond the boundaries of the discipline.
psychology,'' and of a new approach to the analytic process that challenge basic Freudian concepts.
Today, Heinz Kohut, 67 years of age, is a respected analyst, a veteran teacher of Freudian theory at the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago and a past president of the pre-eminent American Psychoanalytic Association (A.P.A.). He is also the creator and chief expounder of a new body of analytic theory, which he calls ''self