 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Janet Malcolm |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Psychoanalysis |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | 1981 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 192 |
| ISBN | 978-0394710341 |
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession is a 1981 book about psychoanalysis by the journalist Janet Malcolm. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf. The book received positive reviews.
Malcolm discusses the work of a psychoanalyst whom she refers to as "Aaron Green", concealing his real name through the use of a pseudonym. She describes his patients and teaching job at a local medical school, the influence of the psychoanalysts Charles Brenner and Jacob Arlow on his theory and technique, and his dismissal of other trends in psychoanalysis, such as those associated with Jacques Lacan, Otto Kernberg, Heinz Kohut, and Melanie Klein. "Green" reveals much of the inner politics of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, to which he is attached. [1] He also explores the challenges to his brand of ego psychology that were being presented by the British Object relations theory, and by such American figures as Kernberg and Kohut, in the late 20th century. [2]
Based on material originally published in The New Yorker , Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1981. [3]
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession received positive reviews from Joseph Adelson in The New York Times and Moss L. Rawn in Psychoanalytic Psychology. [4] [5] The book was also reviewed by Dianne F. Sadoff in The Antioch Review and Joseph L. DeVitis in the Journal of Thought, [6] [7] and discussed by the journalist Mary-Kay Wilmers in the London Review of Books . [8] Malcolm discussed the book in an interview with the journalist Gaby Wood in The Daily Telegraph . [9]
Adelson credited Malcolm with providing an accurate discussion of psychoanalysis, including "a lucid and accurate account" of its "current doctrinal disputes" and a "a chilling depiction" of its politics as an organized movement. He also believed that she conveyed "the claustral atmosphere of the profession". He concluded that Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession was an "artful book" in which Malcolm showed "a keen eye for the surfaces - clothing, speech and furniture - that express character and social role." [4]
Wilmers described the book as a "very striking" book of reportage. [8] Writing in The Boston Phoenix, Mac Margolis observed that the author seems "most taken with the profession" ... "From the subtitle — The Impossible Profession — onward, the book is a paean to the trade. Early on Malcolm casts the profession in practically epic terms." [10]
The historian Peter Gay described Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession as a "witty and wicked" work that had been justly praised by psychoanalysts as "a dependable introduction to psychoanalytic theory and technique". He added that it had "the rare advantage over more solemn texts of being funny as well as informative." [11]
Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Janet Clara Malcolm was an American writer, staff journalist at The New Yorker magazine, and collagist who fled antisemitic persecution in Nazi-occupied Prague. She was the author of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1981), In the Freud Archives (1984), and The Journalist and the Murderer (1990). Malcolm wrote frequently about psychoanalysis and explored the relationship between journalist and subject. She was known for her prose style and for polarizing criticism of her profession, especially in her most contentious work, The Journalist and the Murderer, which has become a staple of journalism-school curricula.
Otto Friedmann Kernberg is an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is most widely known for his psychoanalytic theories on borderline personality organization and narcissistic pathology. In addition, his work has been central in integrating postwar ego psychology with Kleinian and other object relations perspectives. His integrative writings were central to the development of modern object relations, a school within modern psychoanalysis.
Heinz Kohut was a Jewish Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of self psychology, an influential school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory which helped transform the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches.
Heinz Hartmann, was an Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He is considered one of the founders and principal representatives of ego psychology.
Self psychology, a modern psychoanalytic theory and its clinical applications, was conceived by Heinz Kohut in Chicago in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and is still developing as a contemporary form of psychoanalytic treatment. In self psychology, the effort is made to understand individuals from within their subjective experience via vicarious introspection, basing interpretations on the understanding of the self as the central agency of the human psyche. Essential to understanding self psychology are the concepts of empathy, selfobject, mirroring, idealising, alter ego/twinship and the tripolar self. Though self psychology also recognizes certain drives, conflicts, and complexes present in Freudian psychodynamic theory, these are understood within a different framework. Self psychology was seen as a major break from traditional psychoanalysis and is considered the beginnings of the relational approach to psychoanalysis.
Rudolph Maurice Loewenstein was an American psychoanalyst who practiced in Germany, France, and the United States.
Fixation is a concept that was originated by Sigmund Freud (1905) to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits. The term subsequently came to denote object relationships with attachments to people or things in general persisting from childhood into adult life.
Ralph R. Greenson was a prominent American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Greenson is famous for being Marilyn Monroe's psychiatrist. He was the basis for Leo Rosten's 1963 novel, Captain Newman, M.D. The book was later made into a movie starring Gregory Peck as Greenson's character.
The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP) is an institution in New York City founded by Theodore Reik in 1948, established in response to the controversy over lay analysis and the question of the training of psychoanalysts in the United States.
A lay analysis is a psychoanalysis performed by someone who is not a physician; that person was designated a lay analyst.
A training analysis is a psychoanalysis undergone by a candidate as a part of her/his training to be a psychoanalyst; the (senior) psychoanalyst who performs such an analysis is called a training analyst.
Jacob A. Arlow (1912–2004) was an American teacher, scholar, and clinician who served as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.
Charles Brenner was an American psychoanalyst who served as president of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, and is perhaps best known for his contributions to drive theory, the structure of the mind, and conflict theory.
The Independent or Middle Group of British analysts represents one of the three distinct sub-schools of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and 'developed what is known as the British independent perspective, which argued that the primary motivation of the child is object-seeking rather than drive gratification'. The 'Independent group...is strongly associated with the concept of countertransference as well as with a seemingly pragmatic, anti-theoretical attitude to psychoanalysis'.
Sandor Rado was a Hungarian psychoanalyst of the second generation, who moved to the United States in the 1930s.
Joseph J. Sandler was a British psychoanalyst within the Anna Freud Grouping – now the Contemporary Freudians – of the British Psychoanalytical Society; and is perhaps best known for what has been called his 'silent revolution' in re-aligning the concepts of the object relations school within the framework of ego psychology.
Robert Waelder (1900–1967) was a noted Austrian psychoanalyst and member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Waelder studied under Anna Freud and Hermann Nunberg. He was known for his work bringing together psychoanalysis and politics and wrote extensively on the subject.
Narcissistic neurosis is a term introduced by Sigmund Freud to distinguish the class of neuroses characterised by their lack of object relations and their fixation upon the early stage of libidinal narcissism. The term is less current in contemporary psychoanalysis, but still a focus for analytic controversy.
Kurt Robert Eissler was an Austrian psychoanalyst and a scholar and archivist of the work and life of Sigmund Freud.