Reply to Charles Strozier (2003).

Abstract

Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of SubjectivityAttention to complexity of motivation and meaning would improve both Strozier's biography of Heinz Kohut and his treatment of reviewer Karen Maroda (Strozier, 2003).I would like to reply to Charles Strozier's ( 2003) "Reply to Karen Maroda." Because I had such high hopes for this biography-I spent many days reading the manuscript and writing suggestions-and because I fear that I will be heard as simply running to the defense of my dear friend and colleague Bob Stolorow, it is with great reluctance that I enter this discussion at all. Nevertheless, my respect for Karen Maroda, who is not a self psychologist but who maintains, in my experience of her, a wonderful openness to dialogue with many voices in psychoanalysis, pushes me to reply to Strozier's characterization of her, as well as to say something, from a nonexpert's point of view, about biography.First, it seems to me that Maroda (2002) wanted to understand Kohut as a complicated person, and that she seems to have come to the biography more than ready to find and appreciate complexity. This is why she became suspicious when she found particular people close to Kohut so unequivocally dismissed. There was no need to interview people that the biographer had already presented as reliable witnesses. The puzzles lay precisely with the people she actually interviewed (and perhaps a few others). It turns out that the complexity lies not only in Kohut, but also, as Strozier (2003) acknowledges, in his own relationships with people who had known Kohut well in their own ways. It seems to me that we may ask just why so many people in and around Chicago distrusted Strozier as a biographer, and why Tom Kohut wanted to be sure the letters came out so that people could form their own impressions. It seems to me that the story of the biography must bear its own complexity, including the common desire to protect subjects of biography while their immediate family members are still living, as well as whatever attitudes Strozier brought into his relationships with potential sources of added perspective and information.Second, Maroda (2002) seems to me precisely to be rejecting what seem to her, and to her interviewees, overly simplified versions of Heinz Kohut-portraits of him as relentlessly self-absorbed, profoundly dishonest, and so on. When her interviewees characterize the biography as "unempathic," I imagine that they mean that they feel a refusal

Consilient psychoanalysis.

“…Moreover, ad hominem attacks on proponents of competing theories continue to be tolerated by the psychoanalytic community to an unacceptable degree (Lachmann, 2000). For two recent and distressing examples, see Waiess's (2002) ad hominem attack on Bornstein (Bornstein, 2001, 2002) and the heated exchange between Stolorow and Orange versus Strozier (Orange, 2003; Stolorow, 2003a, 2003b; Strozier, 2003a, 2003b).…”

The final reply to Stolorow (2003) and Orange (2003).

“…In his final word in this heated exchange, Strozier dismisses the relevance of Donna Orange's (2003) comments and notes how peculiar were the comments of Robert Stolorow (2003). Strozier's point is that Kohut warmly supported the work of Stolorow, but he notes, again, that the essential concept of so-called intersubjective theory is entirely based in Kohut's ideas from the 1970s.…”

“…Regarding Donna Orange (2003), I think I (Strozier, 2003) wrote a rather measured response to Maroda (2002).…”