A history of the psychoanalytic movement of Self Psychology of Heinz Kohut (1913-1981), originated in Chicago at the end of the 1960s and rapidly diffused in the United States and in the world, is traced. Some aspects of Kohut’s biography, as well as of his ideas that were dissident from Freud’s psychoanalysis, are mentioned. The major writings of Kohut are described, and an attempt is made to evaluate the overall trajectory of Self Psychology and its influence on other psychoanalytic schools such as intersubjective and relational psychoanalyses
Keywords: Heinz Kohut, Self Psychology, history of psychoanalysis, psychobiography, intersubjective psychoanalysis.