ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the subject of courage into the psychoanalytic discourse about masochism and also demonstrates that ordinary ethical and axiological concerns can and should be included in people's psychoanalytic language and practice. Full of distress, hope, the wish to be changed, and the wish to remain the same, patients may have little awareness of the leopards they are dragging when they first seek help from people. When Katharine Hepburn sees the leopard she thought was Baby, she realizes that she has caught the wrong leopard, and she is overcome by terror. Kohut is one of the few psychoanalytic writers to have addressed the subject of courage at length. An examination of his thinking will highlight the question of whether people can consider courage to exist without accompanying masochism. Courage, while clearly understood as an inner quality of mind, is usually considered in terms of its social manifestations, from an objective perspective.
