The talk will consider the profound psychological impact of history on human beings, an impact that psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically psychotherapists have not sufficiently appreciated heretofore. Thomas Kohut will discuss the psychological impact of history on people in relation to his own scholarship, to non-Jewish Germans and Jewish inmates released from Nazi concentration camps after the end of World War II, to his father, Heinz Kohut, and to his development of Self Psychology, and on psychoanalysis itself. Kohut will argue that psychotherapists need to appreciate the psychological power of history to understand their patients–and themselves–and to recognize that psychoanalysis is historically conditioned, that history flows through human beings.
Thomas Kohut, PhD
Thomas Kohut, PhD, is the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Professor of History Emeritus at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he taught for nearly forty years. He has a PhD in History from the University of Minnesota and is a graduate of the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute. From 2000 to 2006, Kohut served as the Dean of the Faculty at Williams. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for nearly twenty years. He is currently a member of the Council of Scholars, which advises the Erikson Institute at Riggs. He is also President of the Freud Foundation US, which supports the work of the Freud Museum in Vienna. Kohut has published three books, Wilhelm II and the Germans: A Study in Leadership (OUP, 1991), A German Generation: An Experiential History of the Twentieth Century (Yale, 2012), and, most recently, Empathy and the Historical Understanding of the Human Past (Routledge, 2020). He has also published articles on topics ranging from the German humorist Wilhelm Busch to letters written by German soldiers surrounded at Stalingrad during World War II. In addition, he has written a number of articles on history, psychoanalysis, and psycho-history.
Karen Roser, PsyD
Karen Roser, PsyD, is a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. A graduate of Bank Street College of Education (MS in special education) and New York University (PsyD in child psychology), she graduated from TRISP’s psychoanalytic program in 2000. She has been treating children, parents, couples and adults since 1995. In addition to chapters in our book, Intersubjective Self Psychology: A Primer, she has published papers in the Psychoanalytic Review and presented numerous papers at TRISP’s Friday night workshops.
Aviva Rohde, PhD, LP
Aviva Rohde, PhD, LP, is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and a graduate of TRISP where she is a senior faculty member. She is in private practice in New York City where she treats adults, adolescents, and couples. She also supervises at TRISP and privately. In addition, she is a contributing author of Intersubjective Self Psychology: A Primer and recently published in Psychoanalysis, Self and Context.
Find Us on Facebook