>>  Kohut's understanding of the holocaust is the most problematic and
>> embarrasing part of all of his writings .Charles B.Stozier, a leading self-
>>   psychologist, has documented this in his essay Heinz Kohut's Struggle with
>>   Religion  in Jacobs, J.L.&Capps,D. (Eds).(1997)Religion,Society and
>>Psychoanalysis-Readings inContemporary Theory.WestviewPress:Boulder,Colo.
>>   In a speech at the Berkeley campus of the University of California,a few
>> daysbefore he died ,he said the following :
>>   "In other words ,there is a step beyond empathy -informed hatred that
wants
>> to destroy you; and an empathyless environment that just brushes you off the
>> faceof the earth . the dreadful experiences of prolonged stays in
concentration
>>   camps during the Nazi era in Germany were just that . It was not cruelty
on
>>   the whole.(The Nazis were not sadistic or cruel in those camps.There were
>>   exceptions of course ,it couldn't be otherwise ,there are always
>>   exceptions;but this was clearly punished ,that was clearly frowned on .)
>> Theytotally disregarded the humaness of the victims .
>>   They were not human,either fully not human ,or almost not human(there was
a
>>   little shift between ,I think, the Jews  and the Poles ,or something like
>>   that,in that respect) . That was the worst ."

Perhaps Kohut was not making a historical or political statement but only
an analytical one: considering the other as non-human goes beyond (as he
says: beyond empathy-informed hatred) sadism and cruelty. The latter
could still imply that one is adressing the other person (in person) to
dominate, humiliate, him/her a.o., thus expecting some response from the
other, recognizing the other as a respondent.
There is no reason to think that Kohut in this sentence denies the
cruelty of what happened in the camps.
He rather stresses that there is a kind of violence to the human person
beyond cruel INTERpersonal relationship: namely DENIAL OF EXISTENCE of
the other as a human person.

It is not necessary to depict the nazis as sadistic figures to condemn
their ideology and their deeds. By making such a remark, Kohut was not
denying the horror of the holocaust, on the contrary: Kohut described
another
major offense to the humanity of the Holocaust victims by pointing at a
kind of
violence that might be MASKED by the more impressive representation of
sadistic behaviour (and exploited by the media !)




Robert Maebe
Schakelveldstraat 5
B 3211 Binkom
32(0)16/816936
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]