Abstract

I will return to the second point in a different context later; at this moment I will discuss only the issue raised by my pointing up the fact that the essay in question was written by someone in Professor Heller's field. What motivated me to make the statement was not my belief that the use of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of art should be restricted to certified psychoanalysts—indeed, I have always been a staunch advocate of the opposite view. My motive for this, I assumed harmless, and not, of course, irrelevant, indiscretion was that I wanted to show that Professor Heller's critique of psychoanalysis was not broadly based, that his representative example was a piece that happened to have crossed his way, that he was not using the work of an established writer in the field that he was condemning. My statement that your essay is an unacceptable text in a sermon preaching against applied analysis is unrelated to the value of your article. Even if in the future it should turn out that your essay—as far as I know your first contribution to applied psychoanalysis—was the forerunner of a significant oeuvre that would put you into the class of the great contributors of psychoanalytic interpretations of literature, it is at this point not an acceptable text for a sermon against our field. Heinz Kohut, M.D., is Professorial Lecturer in Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, teacher and training analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and author of many influential works on the psychology of the self. His works include The Restoration of the Self, The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders - which has appeared in German, French, and Italian translations - and a collection of his essays, Scientific Empathy and Empathic Science. His "Psychoanalysis and the Interpretation of Literature: A Correspondence with Erich Heller" was published in the Spring 1978 issue of Critical Inquiry