A Psychotherapy for the People—Toward a Progressive Psychoanalysis

How did psychoanalysis come to define itself as being different from psychotherapy? How have racism, homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitism converged in the creation of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis? Is psychoanalysis psychotherapy? Is psychoanalysis a "Jewish science"?

Inspired by the progressive and humanistic origins of psychoanalysis, Lewis Aron and Karen Starr pursue Freud's call for psychoanalysis to be a "psychotherapy for the people." They present a cultural history focusing on how psychoanalysis has always defined itself in relation to an "other." At first, that other was hypnosis and suggestion; later it was psychotherapy. The authors trace a series of binary oppositions, each defined hierarchically, which have plagued the history of psychoanalysis. Tracing reverberations of racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia, they show that psychoanalysis, associated with phallic masculinity, penetration, heterosexuality, autonomy, and culture, was defined in opposition to suggestion and psychotherapy, which were seen as promoting dependence, feminine passivity, and relationality. Aron and Starr deconstruct these dichotomies, leading the way for a return to Freud's progressive vision, in which psychoanalysis, defined broadly and flexibly, is revitalized for a new era.

A Psychotherapy for the People will be of interest to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists--and their patients--and to those studying feminism, cultural studies and Judaism.

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.