Progressive Psychoanalysis As A Social Justice Movement

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.

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.

What does it feel like to encounter ourselves and one another as implicated subjects, both in our everyday lives and in the context of our work as clinicians, and how does this matter? With contributions from a diverse group of relational psychoanalytic thinkers, this book reads Michael Rothberg’s concept of the implicated subject—the notion that we are continuously implicated in injustices even when not perpetrators—as calling us to elaborate what it feels like to inhabit such subjectivities in relation to others both similarly and differently situated. Implication and anti-Black racism are central to many chapters, with attention given to the unique vulnerability of racial minority immigrants, to Native American genocide, and to the implication of ordinary Israelis in the oppression of Palestinians. The book makes the case that the therapist’s ongoing openness to learning of our own implication in enactments is central to a relational sensibility and to a progressive psychoanalysis. As a contribution to the necessary and long-overdue conversation within the psychoanalytic field about racism, social injustice, and ways to move toward a just society, this book will be essential for all relational psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

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.

Drawing on interviews with witnesses to the early psychoanalytic movement as well as new archival material, this chronicle seeks to rescue from obscurity the history of a movement usually regarded as an expensive form of treatment for the economically & intellectually advantaged.

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.

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.

In the second edition of Uprooted Minds, Hollander offers a unique social psychoanalytic exploration of our increasingly destabilized political environment, augmented by her research into the previously untold history of psychoanalytic engagement in the challenging social issues of our times. Often akin to a political thriller, Hollander’s social psychoanalytic analysis of the devastating effects of group trauma is illuminated through testimonials by U.S. and South American psychoanalysts who have survived the vicissitudes of their countries’ authoritarian political regimes and destabilizing economic crises. Hollander encourages reflections about our experience as social/psychological subjects through her elaboration of the reciprocal impact of social power, hegemonic ideology, large group dynamics and unconscious processes. Her epilogue, written a decade after the first edition of Uprooted Minds, extends its themes to the present period, arguing for a decolonial psychoanalysis that addresses coloniality and white supremacy as the latent forces responsible for our deepening political crises and environmental catastrophe. She shows how the progressive psychoanalytic activism she depicts in the book that was on the margins of the profession has in the last decade moved increasingly to the centre of psychoanalytic theory and praxis. This book will prove essential for those at work or interested in the fields of psychoanalysis, politics, economics, globalization and history.