A Psychotherapy for the People ─ Toward a Progressive Psychoanalysis

Volume 55 in the Relational Perspectives book series from Routledge, this book discusses the idea of progressive psychoanalysis from a perspective deeply embedded within the psychoanalyitic field. (The primary distinction in mental health modalities here is between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.) The authors are Lewis Aron (director, New York U. Postdoc Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis) and Karen Starr, a private practitioner and a student in Aron's program. The authors spend the book wrestling with a problem specific to those in the field who consider themselves social progressives: Freudianism is historically associated with progressive intellectuals in the US, but is based on a series of Victorian core myths that would be considered right-wing, or even nonsensical, by modern standards of thinking about gender, race, sex, and class. The authors argue that psychoanalysis has always defined itself against an "other." As proponents of the current trend in left-leaning intellectual politics to define any set of two options as a moral evil, the authors find this idea deeply troubling. They use two principles--"othering," and the evils of the binary-as an organizing premise for discussing issues of boundary maintenance in the professionalization of psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, and issues of prejudice in Freudian theory: anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, and so on. The goal is to imagine the field as populist, and therefore for everyone. The text struggles with two difficulties. The first is that given the distance between progressive politics and Freudian core myths, the obvious choice would be to dispense with one or the other. This is not an option only for those who believe in both. The second is that human beings must choose one word or action at a time. They make those choices by comparing options. When this process is identified with the evils of the binary, any choice is equated with prejudice. It then becomes difficult to engage in any kind of productive action, or even to speak clearly. Within this context, the authors try to describe a form of psychoanalysis/psychotherapy that would be both politically correct and true to the spirit of Freud. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Lewis Aron is the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is author and editor of numerous articles and books on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, including A Meeting of Minds and the Relational Perspectives Book Series. He was one of the co-founders of the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He has served as President of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association; founding President of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP); founding President of the Division of Psychologist-Psychoanalysts of the New York State Psychological Association (NYSPA). He is the co-founder and co-chair of the Sandor Ferenczi Center at the New School for Social Research, and is an Honorary Member of the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society. He practices and leads numerous study groups in New York City and Port Washington, NY.

Karen Starr is the author of Repair of the Soul: Metaphors of Transformation in Judaism and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2008). She is a candidate at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and a recipient of the Ruth Stein Prize. She is in private practice in New York City.