ABSTRACT
This supplementary chapter is a letter that Morgenthaler wrote to the Austrian-American psychoanalyst and pioneering self psychologist Heinz Kohut in response to the latter’s second major work The Restoration of the Self (1977). Praising the book as spectacular and pioneering, Morgenthaler lauds Kohut for being the first to provide a conceptual understanding of a ubiquitous, crucial, and yet conceptually underdetermined aspect of human life: the importance of the relationship the individual has with the self and with others. Considering the book a cornerstone for a psychology of society that uses the model of the pathology of narcissistic neuroses, Morgenthaler proceeds to urge Kohut to take his far-reaching, revolutionary insights to their full potential and apply them to society in the same way as he applies them to his patients rather than remaining confined to the strictly clinical realm. Morgenthaler ends the letter with a point of criticism. Disagreeing with Kohut’s marginal treatment of sexuality and his reification of a normative, polarized conceptualization of sexuality as either “healthy” or “abnormal,” he instead advocates for transforming the way homosexuality and fetishisms are experienced rather than trying to “heal” them.
