This edited volume challenges our negative and incorrect definitions of psychoanalysis by focusing on the notion that psychoanalysis once was, and can once again be, a movement for social justice. Taking the work of Erich Fromm as a guide, the chapters in this volume highlight psychoanalysis’ social justice origins, while illustrating how psychoanalysis – in both an interpretive role and as a clinical tool – can improve our understanding of contemporary social problems and address the effects of those problems within the clinical setting.
Today many view Sigmund Freud as an elitist whose psychoanalytic treatment was reserved for the intellectually and financially advantaged. However, in this new work Elizabeth Ann Danto presents a strikingly different picture of Freud and the early psychoanalytic movement. Danto recovers the neglected history of Freud and other analysts' intense social activism and their commitment to treating the poor and working classes. Danto's narrative begins in the years following the end of World War I and the fall of the Habsburg Empire. Joining with the social democratic and artistic movements that were sweeping across Central and Western Europe, analysts such as Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Erik Erikson, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Helene Deutsch envisioned a new role for psychoanalysis. These psychoanalysts saw themselves as brokers of social change and viewed psychoanalysis as a challenge to conventional political and social traditions. Between 1920 and 1938 and in ten different cities, they created outpatient centers that provided free mental health care. They believed that psychoanalysis would share in the transformation of civil society and that these new outpatient centers would help restore people to their inherently good and productive selves. Drawing on oral histories and new archival material, Danto offers vivid portraits of the movement's central figures and their beliefs. She explores the successes, failures, and challenges faced by free institutes such as the Berlin Poliklinik, the Vienna Ambulatorium, and Alfred Adler's child-guidance clinics. She also describes the efforts of Wilhelm Reich's Sex-Pol, a fusion of psychoanalysis and left-wing politics, which provided free counseling and sex education and aimed to end public repression of private sexuality. In addition to situating the efforts of psychoanalysts in the political and cultural contexts of Weimar Germany and Red Vienna, Danto also discusses the important treatments and methods developed during this period, including child analysis, short-term therapy, crisis intervention, task-centered treatment, active therapy, and clinical case presentations. Her work illuminates the importance of the social environment and the idea of community to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.
As inequality widens in all sectors of contemporary society, we must ask: is psychoanalysis too white and well-to-do to be relevant to social, economic, and racial justice struggles? Are its ideas and practices too alien for people of color? Can it help us understand why systems of oppression are so stable and how oppression becomes internalized? In A People’s Historyof Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology, Daniel José Gaztambide reviews the oft-forgotten history of social justice in psychoanalysis. Starting with the work of Sigmund Freud and the first generation of left-leaning psychoanalysts, Gaztambide traces a series of interrelated psychoanalytic ideas and social justice movements that culminated in the work of Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, and Ignacio Martín-Baró. Through this intellectual genealogy, Gaztambide presents a psychoanalytically informed theory of race, class, and internalized oppression that resulted from the intertwined efforts of psychoanalysts and racial justice advocates over the course of generations and gave rise to liberation psychology. This book is recommended for students and scholars engaged in political activism, critical pedagogy, and clinical work.
This book is based on the premise that understanding fascism is crucial for defeating it. Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements suggests fascism must be understood according to two “dimensions.” First, fascism is a social movement seeking power, always already connected to sources of power. Hence, fascism cannot be defeated by policing it as a crime problem, nor therapeutically treating it as a pathology of mental health. Second, fascists have cognitive and emotional needs they are seeking to fulfill through their participation in the movement, but the presence of these motivations must be held in tension with the fact that fascists are responsible for their choices and that these individual motivations also exist in a wider social context of capitalism and systems of supremacy. The book opens by examining some psychological elements of recruitment and disengagement from fascist movements, before addressing broader social narratives, concluding with the limitations of an approach that is grounded in the national security state that relies on individualized, perpetrator-centered interventions. Rejecting centrist paradigms that see fascism as “extremism” or “accelerationism,” Braune argues that fascism must be addressed in its specificity and uniqueness as an ideology and movement. Ultimately, she argues, fascism can only be defeated by countervailing social movements that not only demand radical social change but offer alternative spaces of belonging, community care, and the search for meaning. Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements is a philosophical contribution to antifascist theory and practice that will be appreciated by academics, students, and activists concerned about fascism today.
What is maturity? Politics of Maturity scrutinizes the process of maturing and how--and why--we have traditionally conceptualized it. Why is it that when we picture an "adult" we often envision someone who is married, has children, and is economically successful? Tanya Loughead challenges such traditional notions of maturity by raising fundamental questions about society and its structure. Which structures and experiences help us to mature or block us from maturing? One thing is certain: we do not mature by ourselves. This book argues that lack of maturity in society is not merely a problem of individual personalities; it is equally a political and philosophical problem that requires revolutionary rethinking and redefinition.
Although there have been many attempts to apply the ideas of psychoanalysis to political thought, this book is the first to identify the political project inherent in the fundamental tenets of psychoanalysis. And this political project, Todd McGowan contends, provides an avenue for emancipatory politics after the failure of Marxism in the twentieth century. Where others seeking the political import of psychoanalysis have looked to Freud's early work on sexuality, McGowan focuses on Freud's discovery of the death drive and Jacques Lacan's elaboration of this concept. He argues that the self-destruction occurring as a result of the death drive is the foundational act of emancipation around which we should construct our political philosophy. Psychoanalysis offers the possibility for thinking about emancipation not as an act of overcoming loss but as the embrace of loss. It is only through the embrace of loss, McGowan suggests, that we find the path to enjoyment, and enjoyment is the determinative factor in all political struggles--and only in a political project that embraces the centrality of loss will we find a viable alternative to global capitalism.
Is CBT all it claims to be? The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami: Managerialism, Politics, and the Corruptions of Science provides a powerful critique of CBT’s understanding of human suffering, as well as the apparent scientific basis underlying it. The book argues that CBT psychology has fetishized measurement to such a degree that it has come to believe that only the countable counts. It suggests that the so-called science of CBT is not just "bad science" but "corrupt science". The rise of CBT has been fostered by neoliberalism and the phenomenon of New Public Management. The book not only critiques the science, psychology and philosophy of CBT, but also challenges the managerialist mentality and its hyper-rational understanding of "efficiency", both of which are commonplace in organizational life today. The book suggests that these are perverse forms of thought, which have been institutionalised by NICE and IAPT and used by them to generate narratives of CBT’s prowess. It claims that CBT is an exercise in symptom reduction which vastly exaggerates the degree to which symptoms are reduced, the durability of the improvement, as well as the numbers of people it helps. Arguing that CBT is neither the cure nor the scientific treatment it claims to be, the book also serves as a broader cultural critique of the times we live in; a critique which draws on philosophy and politics, on economics and psychology, on sociology and history, and ultimately, on the idea of science itself. It will be of immense interest to psychotherapists, policymakers and those concerned about the excesses of managerialism.
Developed by progressive social scientists in the early 20th century, the juvenile justice system in the U.S. consisted of courts and corrections aimed at reforming disorderly youth. Poor immigrant boys, roaming the streets unsupervised, were its usual subjects. Psychologists and sociologists equated maleness with innate insensitivity, lack of self-control and violent tendencies. In the belief that proper discipline would save the troubled boys from "feminization" and help control their destructive impulses, a rigid masculine authority--challenged by women activists--began to be imposed by a reactionary patriarchal system. This study of delinquency in 1920s Chicago examines the lives of boys, many of whom spent their early years incarcerated, who survived by embracing criminal personas. Predatory masculinity emerges as a source of personal struggle, and as the basis for an array of contemporary social problems, including mass violence and suicide.
In our post-9/11 environment, our sense of relative security and stability as privileged subjects living in the heart of Empire has been profoundly shaken. Hollander explores the forces that have brought us to this critical juncture, analyzing the role played by the neoliberal economic paradigm and conservative political agenda that emerged in the West over the past four decades with devastating consequences for the hemisphere's citizens. Narrative testimonies of progressive U.S. and Latin American psychoanalysts illuminate the psychological meanings of living under authoritarian political conditions and show how a psychoanalysis "beyond the couch" contributes to social struggles on behalf of human rights and redistributive justice. By interrogating themes related to the mutual effects of social power and ideology, large group dynamics and unconscious fantasies, affects and defenses, Hollander encourages reflections about our experience as social/psychological subjects.
APA offers the Theories of Psychotherapy Series as a focused resource for understanding the major theoretical models practiced by psychotherapists today. Each book presents a concentrated review of the history, key concepts, and application of a particular theoretical approach to the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of clients. The series emphasizes solid theory and evidence-based practice, illustrated with rich case examples featuring diverse clients. Practitioners and students will look to these books as jewels of information and inspiration. Book jacket.
