I have two primary aims in the following paper, aims that are inextricably intertwined. First, I want to raise some historiographical and epistemological issues about how to write the history of psychoanalysis. Although they arise quite generally in the history of science, these issues have a special status and urgency when the domain is the history of psychoanalysis. Second, in light of the epistemological and methodological orientation that I am going to advocate, I want to (...) begin a reading of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, one whose specificity is a function of my attachment to this orientation, to a particular way of doing the history of psychoanalysis. Despite the enormous number of pages that have been written on Freud’s Three Essays, it is very easy to underestimate the density of this book, a density at once historical, rhetorical, and conceptual. This underestimation stems in part from historiographical presumptions that quite quickly misdirect us away from the fundamental issues.In raising question about the historiography of the history of science, I obviously cannot begin at the beginning. So let me begin much further along, with the writings of Michel Foucault. I think of the works of Foucault, in conjunction with that of Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem, as exemplifying a very distinctive perspective about how to write the history of science. In the English-speaking world, perhaps only the work of Ian Hacking both shares this perspective and ranks with its French counterparts in terms of originality and quality. No brief summary can avoid eliding the differences between Bachelard, Canguilhem, Hacking, and Foucault; indeed, the summary I am going to produce does not even fully capture Foucault’s perspective, which he called “archaeology.”1 But this sketch will have to do for the purposes I have in mind here, whose ultimate aim is to reorient our approach to the history of psychoanalysis. 1. The sketch that follows reproduces, with some omissions and additions, the beginning of my “Archeology, Genealogy, Ethics,” in Michel Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed. David Hoy , pp. 221-34. Arnold I. Davidson is assistant professor in the department of philosophy, the Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science, and the Committee on General Studies in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. He is currently writing a book on the history and epistemology of nineteenth-century psychiatric theories of sexuality. (shrink)

This volume explores a central paradox in the evolution of psychoanalytic thought and practice and the ways in which they were used.

Histories of psychoanalysis largely respect the boundaries drawn by the psychoanalytic profession, suggesting that the development of psychoanalytic theories and techniques has been the exclusive remit of professionally trained analysts. In this article, I offer an historical example that poses a challenge to this orthodoxy. Based on extensive archival material, I show how British psychiatric social workers, a little-studied group of specialist mental hygiene workers, advanced key organisational, observational, and theoretical insights that shaped mid-century British psychoanalysis. In their (...) daily work compiling patient histories, conducting home visits, and interviewing the parents of ‘maladjusted’ children, psychiatric social workers were uniquely positioned to expose the importance of family relationships in the development of childhood neuroses. As this article details, their analytic attention to these dynamics not only influenced, but fundamentally constituted the innovative research on maternal-child relationships and family therapy pioneered by eminent psychoanalyst John Bowlby. In addition, psychiatric social workers produced and published independent psychoanalytic research, and fiercely debated the limitations of analytic concepts such as transference. In presenting the relationship between British psychiatric social work and psychoanalysis, this article suggests a new way of telling the history of both. (shrink)

How did psychoanalysis attain its prominent cultural position? How did it eclipse rival psychologies and psychotherapies, such that it became natural to bracket Freud with Copernicus and Darwin? Why did Freud 'triumph' to such a degree that we hardly remember his rivals? This book reconstructs the early controversies around psychoanalysis and shows that rather than demonstrating its superiority, Freud and his followers rescripted history. This legend-making was not an incidental addition to psychoanalytic theory but formed its core. (...) Letting the primary material speak for itself, this history demonstrates the extraordinary apparatus by which this would-be science of psychoanalysis installed itself in contemporary societies. Beyond psychoanalysis, it opens up the history of the constitution of the modern psychological sciences and psychotherapies, how they furnished the ideas which we have of ourselves and how these became solidified into indisputable 'facts'. (shrink)

There is a common tradition in European education going back to the Middle Ages which long played a part in providing the curriculum of schools which catered both for the wealthy and for able sons of less well-to-do families. Originally published in 1974, this volume examines the relationship between education and society in the different countries of Europe from which differences in tradition and practice emerge. The countries discussed include: France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Poland and Sweden.

Originally published in 1972, this book is concerned with education as part of a larger social history. Chapters include: The roots of Anglican supremacy in English education The Board schools of London The use of ecclesiastical records for the history of education Topographical resources: private and secondary education from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Child analysis has occupied a special place in the history of psychoanalysis because of the challenges it poses to practitioners and the clashes it has provoked among its advocates. Since the early days in Vienna under Sigmund Freud child psychoanalysts have tried to comprehend and make comprehensible to others the psychosomatic troubles of childhood and to adapt clinical and therapeutic approaches to all the stages of development of the baby, the child, the adolescent and the young adult. Claudine (...) and Pierre Geissmann trace the history and development of child analysis over the last century and assess the contributions made by pioneers of the discipline, whose efforts to expand its theoretical foundations led to conflict between schools of thought, most notably to the rift between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Now taught and practised widely in Europe, the USA and South America, child and adolescent psychoanalysis is unique in the insight it gives into the psychological aspects of child development, and in the therapeutic benefits it can bring both to the child and its family. (shrink)

Originally published in 1971, this volume examines the relationship between the history and sociology of education. History does not stand in isolation, but has much to draw from and contribute to, other disciplines. The methods and concepts of sociology, in particular, are exerting increasing influence on historical studies, especially the history of education. Since education is considered to be part of the social system, historians and sociologists have come to survey similar fields; yet each discipline appears to (...) have its own aims and methodology. (shrink)

Part of the educational system in England has been geared towards the preparation of particular professions, while the identity and status of members of some professions have depended significantly on the general education they have received. Originally published in 1973, this volume explores the interaction between education and the professions. It also looks at the education of the main professions in sixteenth century England and at how twentieth century university teaching is a key profession for the training of new recruits (...) to other professions. (shrink)

La conférence que Georges Canguilhem donna au Collège philosophique de Jean Wahl en 1956, « Qu’est-ce que la psychologie? », fut saluée par Jacques Lacan comme une défense de la psychanalyse contre les prétentions hégémoniques de la psychologie. La psychanalyse, dont la naissance est malgré tout comprise dans la généalogie esquissée par Canguilhem, est-elle toutefois vraiment à l’abri des critiques que celui-ci adresse à la psychologie? Cette contribution analyse le rapport de la psychanalyse à l’instrumentalisme foncier de la psychologie sous (...) trois aspects : la relation entre science et vérité, la réduction par Gassendi et la tradition aristotélique du niveau originaire et spéculatif du cogito cartésien à celui spéculaire de la connaissance physique de l’âme par soi-même, et le choix freudien et lacanien d’un être-pour-la-mort contre toute philosophie de la vie. À la lumière du scientisme de la psychanalyse et de son rapport constitutif au mythe et au sacré, que Lacan pas plus que Freud n’arrive à dépasser, un lien est enfin établi avec, d’une part, l’archéologie de la psychanalyse développée dans Naissance de la clinique et La volonté de savoir et, de l’autre, le privilège que Foucault accorde à la psychanalyse et à l’ethnologie parmi les sciences humaines dans Les mots et les choses. (shrink)

All disciplines have their histories in addition to their theories. In general, the history of a set of problems is treated separately from the nature of the problems themselves. The axioms of a given discipline may be the object of external inquiry but are not usually subject to historical examination. In this way, psychoanalysis has been investigated, even challenged, by a variety of other disciplines: biology, linguistics, history, philosophy, literature, and so forth. One may ask whether (...) class='Hi'>psychoanalysis can also become its own object, effectively distancing itself from itself. Will historical scrutiny provide criticism from within and thereby alter the nature of psychoanalysis?It has been our observation that the history of the creation of psychoanalysis and of the psychoanalytic movement suggests deficiencies and omissions within psychoanalytic theory. This implies something far beyond the simple idea that no serious examination of theoretical problems can occur without an understanding of their history. Not only the past but the future of psychoanalysis, both as a theory and as a clinical practice, may well depend on the conscious assessment and assimilation of its own history. “The Secret of Psychoanalysis: History Reads Theory” is intended in part as an introduction to Nicolas Abraham’s “Notes on the Phantom” which will, in turn, illuminate the theoretical and practical scope of this essay.A history of Freudian psychoanalysis could be written based on the voices of dissenting insiders, without including schismatics such as Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Wilhelm Stekel, and others who eventually developed independent systems of thought. The detailed interpretation of such firsts is already a consecrated approach to psychoanalytic history. But much remains to be learned from the internal criticism of those who have participated in Freud’s movement or have sought sympathetically to understand the birth and progress of Freudian psychoanalysis. Most of the disagreements concern theoretical and clinical issues or the clocked access to documents that are essential to the history assessment of psychoanalysis. This is Ludwig Marcuse’s case as he writes to Ernest Jones on 10 October 1957.1 1. Ludwig Marcuse is the author of Freud und sein Bild vom Menschen [Freud and his image of man] . Nicholas Rand, assistant professor of French at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, is completing a book on the notion of hiding in literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Maria Torok is the author of The Wolf Man’s Magic Word , recently published in translation. “The Secret of Psychoanalysis” is part of a book-length study Rand and Torok are writing on Freud and psychoanalytic theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article argues that, although psychoanalysis and history have different conceptions of time and causality, there can be a productive relationship between them. Psychoanalysis can force historians to question their certainty about facts, narrative, and cause; it introduces disturbing notions about unconscious motivation and the effects of fantasy on the making of history. This was not the case with the movement for psychohistory that began in the 1970s. Then the influence of American ego‐psychology on history‐writing (...) promoted the idea of compatibility between the two disciplines in ways that undercut the critical possibilities of their interaction. The work of the French historian Michel de Certeau provides theoretical insight into the uses of incommensurability, while that of Lyndal Roper demonstrates both its limits and its value for enriching historical understanding. (shrink)

Psychoanalytic writing rarely features on university ethics curricula, so the idea that psychoanalysis has a place in the history of ethics may be a surprise. The aim of the paper is to show that it should not be. The strategy is to sketch in outline an enduring line of inquiry in the history of ethics, namely the Platonic-Aristotelian investigation of the relationship between human nature, human excellence and the human good, and to suggest that psychoanalysis exemplifies (...) it too. But since the suggestion, once made, seems not only true but obviously true, the paper spends some time exploring why the place of psychoanalysis in the history of ethics has so often been overlooked, before developing the outline more fully and offering detailed reasons as to why psychoanalysis fits it. One consequence is that Freudian and ‘relational’ variants of psychoanalysis continue the Platonic-Aristotelian line of inquiry in interestingly different ways. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

Psychoanalytic writing rarely features on university ethics curricula, so the idea that psychoanalysis has a place in the history of ethics may be a surprise. The aim of the paper is to show that it should not be. The strategy is to sketch in outline an enduring line of inquiry in the history of ethics, namely the Platonic-Aristotelian investigation of the relationship between human nature, human excellence and the human good, and to suggest that psychoanalysis exemplifies (...) it too. But since the suggestion, once made, seems not only true but obviously true, the paper spends some time exploring why the place of psychoanalysis in the history of ethics has so often been overlooked, before developing the outline more fully and offering detailed reasons as to why psychoanalysis fits it. One consequence is that Freudian and ‘relational’ variants of psychoanalysis continue the Platonic-Aristotelian line of inquiry in interestingly different ways. (shrink)

Psychoanalytic writing rarely features on university ethics curricula, so the idea that psychoanalysis has a place in the history of ethics may be a surprise. The aim of the paper is to show that it should not be. The strategy is to sketch in outline an enduring line of inquiry in the history of ethics, namely the Platonic-Aristotelian investigation of the relationship between human nature, human excellence and the human good, and to suggest that psychoanalysis exemplifies (...) it too. But since the suggestion, once made, seems not only true but obviously true, the paper spends some time exploring why the place of psychoanalysis in the history of ethics has so often been overlooked, before developing the outline more fully and offering detailed reasons as to why psychoanalysis fits it. One consequence is that Freudian and ‘relational’ variants of psychoanalysis continue the Platonic-Aristotelian line of inquiry in interestingly different ways. (shrink)

In concept, an image has both verticality and horizontal dimensions. Saturated images within this space have a horizon and can exceed that horizon. Within that horizon where the image dwells something chances itself upon the observer and the observed. Into that public space between self and other, students bring an instrumental approach to how they plan to deploy their new fund of knowledge, only to discover that the setting itself has become an event where surprise and upheaval disrupt their illusion (...) of self-continuity and the façade of familiarity. Phenomenologically, upheaval shows itself when givenness both precedes and participates in the giving of phenomena such as medical students’ “before and after” images of psychoanalysis. They discover and reconfigure their erstwhile absolute positions and values into reconfigurations of self and prior commitments. The turning point from their instrumental use of knowledge to reconfigurations of how they situate themselves in the world decisively comes when teaching and learning become an event in se that disturbs their sense of order.Following Husserl, phenomenological psychological observation has required us to go from the events of history to a sense of history. Would, however, that we could stay at the level of events much longer to see images explode and exceed their horizons from the illusion of order, and patterned repetition disrupted by surprise, upheaval and indeterminacy in the spirit of Alain Badiou! (shrink)

In 1958 William L. Langer, in a well-known presidential address to the American Historical Association, declared the informed use of psychoanalytic depth psychology as "the next assignment" for professional historians. _Psychoanalysis and History_, volume 31 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis_, examines the degree to which Langer's directive has been realized in the intervening 45 years. Section I makes the case for psychobiography in the lives of historical figures and exemplifies this perspective with analytically informed studies of the art of Wassily (...) Kandinsky; the films of Stanley Kubrick; and the anti-Semitism of Adolf Hitler. Section II reviews Freud's own psychohistorical contributions and then considers the relevance to historical inquiry of the more recent perspectives of Winnicott, Kernberg, and Kohut. Section III explores an intriguing tributary of psychobiographical inquiry: the impact of the biographer's own subjectivity on his or her work. Section IV turns to a topic of perennial interest: the psychobiographical study of American presidents. Section V turns to the special challenges of applying psychoanalysis to topics of religious history and includes topical studies of religious figures as disparate as the 15th century Asian Drukpa Kunley and Osama bin Laden. Section VI focuses on the recent extension of psychohistorical inquiry to groups of people and to cultural phenomena more generally: an investigation of the youth movement in pre-Nazi Germany; consideration of how societies, no less than individuals, reenact and work through traumas over time; and an outline of the role of analysis in constructing a depth-psychological "social psychology" of use to historians. These papers, no less than those that precede them, are compelling testimony to the claim with which editors James William Anderson and Jerome A. Winer begin the volume, to wit, that "Psychoanalysis would seem to be a resource indispensable to the study of history.". (shrink)

Em busca da relação profícua entre Psicanálise e História, procura-se, neste artigo avaliar como Carlo Ginzburg, em sua trajetória intelectual e acadêmica, discutiu Freud e a Psicanálise à luz da Micro-História. Para tanto, a obra de Ginzburg Mitos, emblemas, sinais: morfologia e história tornou-se um manancial para esta busca. Nos capítulos Sinais: raízes de um paradigma indiciário e, principalmente, Freud, o homem dos lobos e os lobisomens, Ginzburg discute criticamente as interpretações de Freud sobre o seu caso clínico mais importante, (...) um paciente russo de nome Serguei Constantinovitch Pankejeff, conhecido como O Homem dos Lobos. Ginzburg não deixa de reconhecer a magnitude da obra de Freud, mas aponta suas limitações como não considerar suficientemente a formação cultural de seu paciente e dar um enfoque maior a individuação. Ginzburg permitiu, ainda, demonstrar em sua obra a importância da Psicanálise na elaboração do conceito fundamental à MicroHistória, o paradigma indiciário. (shrink)

Sigmund Freud’s five long case histories have been the focus of seemingly endless fascination and criticism. This article examines how the long case-history genre developed and its impact on the professionalization of psychoanalysis. It argues that the long case histories, using a distinctive form that highlighted the peculiarities of psychoanalytic theory, served as exemplars in the discipline. In doing so, the article extends John Forrester’s work on ‘thinking in cases’ to show the practical implications of that style of (...) reasoning. The article illustrates how the form disappeared once the theoretical basis of the movement was set. The genre never became institutionalized, although the content of the five long case histories did, because of Freud’s accepted role as theoretician of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

The focus of this essay will be on Freud, although my approach is informed by certain aspects of “post-Freudian” analysis. In the works of Freud, however, history in the ordinary sense often seems lost in the shuffle between ontogeny and phylogeny. When Freud, in the latter part of his life, turned to cultural history, he was primarily concerned with showing how the evolution of civilization on a macrological level might be understood through—or even seen as an enactment of—psychoanalytic (...) principles and processes. And he openly acknowledged the speculative nature of his inquiry into prehistory, “archaic” society, and their putative relation to the civilizing process.One might nonetheless argue that throughout Freud’s work there are theoretical bases and fruitful leads for a more delimited investigation of specific historical processes for which documentation is, to a greater or lesser extent, available. This kind of investigation is, moreover, required to test the pertinence of Freud’s speculative and at times quasi-mythological initiatives. At present one can perhaps do little more than tentatively suggest how such an investigation might proceed and the sorts of issues it might conceivably illuminate. For its elaboration has been relatively underdeveloped in the research of those who looks to Freud for guidance. Dominick LaCapra is GGoldwin Smith Professor of European Intellectual History at Cornell University. His most recent books are “Madame Bovary” on Trial , Rethinking Intellectual History , and History and Criticism . He has just completed a book-length manuscript entitled “History, Politics, and the Novel.”. (shrink)

A history of psychoanalysis through the twentieth century, critiquing Freud as a scientist and as a creative thinker, and considering the political and social environment in which psychoanalysis was born and applied.

With studies like Discourse Networks 1800/1900 and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Friedrich A. Kittler contributed significantly to transforming the history of media into a vital field of inquiry. This essay undertakes to more precisely characterize Kittler’s historiographical approach. When we look back on his early contributions to studies of the relationship between literature, madness and truth – among others, his doctoral dissertation on the Swiss poet and writer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer – what strikes us is the significance that Jacques Lacan’s (...) structuralist psychoanalysis had in shaping the orientation of Kittler’s later studies. His intensive engagement with Lacan galvanized Kittler’s concern with the question of sex and/or gender in the evolution of the humanities as well as his concern with the media history of the university. At the same time, Kittler’s reliance on Lacan led him to a kind of history that is interested above all in the internal logic of discourse. As we see, for instance, in Kittler’s anecdotic treatment of 19th-century physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, this historiography does not involve any original research in archives and/or museums. Rather, it builds upon existing historical accounts and focuses its analyses on the issue of symbolic structures. Instead of investigating the history of the material culture of science and technology, what is thereby ultimately reinforced is a philosophical idealism in which knowledge and paranoia become superimposed in and by means of an ‘original syntax’. (shrink)

Philologus, founded in 1846, is one of the oldest and most respected periodicals in the field of Classics. It publishes articles on Greek and Latin literature, historiography, philosophy, history of religion, linguistics, reception, and the history of scholarship. The journal aims to contribute to our understanding of Greco-Roman culture and its lasting influence on European civilization. The journal Philologus, conceived as a forum for discussion among different methodological approaches to the study of ancient texts and their reception, publishes (...) original scholarly contributions with a strong international focus. Publications languages are: German, English, Italian, French. As of 2014 the publication of supplementary volumes will be resumed. The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes will publish monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a special focus on topics concerning literary theory, philosophy and the history of scholarship from an interdisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

Originally published in 1984, this book broke new ground in assessing Freud as both an exemplary late-Victorian and as a pivotal figure in the creation of modern thought and culture. In his close reading of various of Freud’s theoretical and clinical texts, including two of the most famous case histories, Steven Marcus uncovers the steps in the development of Freud’s thought, the dynamics and contradictions and ‘the intellectual and emotional urgings, forces and conflicts that were at work… as the first (...) original insights and discoveries that constituted the inception of psychoanalysis as a theory, discipline of inquiry, and new kind of therapy, came suddenly, often unexpectedly and without being bidden, upon Freud’. Central to Professor Marcus’ inquiry is the relationship of Freud’s work to cultural change and to the very process of disclosure, formation and construction in the transition to modernity. Freud’s writings, and the psychoanalytic discipline of which they are the foundations, are placed in the context of their contribution to modern modes of thought, and of their influence on our notions of the centres of significance of each existence as a whole. Freud and the Culture of Psychoanalysis is a major contribution to our understanding of how ideas and theories become internalized into the intellectual framework of our lives and affect the way we think about the world. By moving backward and forward from pre-Freudian to post-Freudian thinkers, Professor Marcus takes us on a journey through cultural transition that is also an exploration of how the individual interacts with his own moment in history to forge new modes of consciousness. (shrink)

Taking Derrida's essay “Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul: the Impossible Beyond of a Sovereign Cruelty” as my point of departure I would like to discuss three exemplary moments in the performative history of psychoanalysis in America: Freud's 1909 “Introductory Lectures to Psychoanalysis” at Clark University, Lacan's visit to the Yale School in 1975, and Derrida's fictionalization of his travel to America in the “Envois” section of The Post Card. Throughout, I would like to keep (...) at the forefront of our minds the question of cruelty and the unique and unusual place that cruelty plays in both American culture and the history of psychoanalysis in America. (shrink)

This article re-examines the closing sections of Michel Foucault's The Order of Things in order to address the longstanding question of whether he is best understood as a philosopher or a historian. My central argument is that this question misses the crucial point of Foucault's work, which is to historicize the notion of history, which Foucault takes to be central to the historical a priori of modernity. An examination of his historicization of History thus reveals that Foucault is (...) neither simply a philosopher—because he conceives of philosophy in modernity as a historical enterprise—nor a historian—because his own historical approach is designed to transform the modern historical a priori from within. This analysis also sheds new light of Foucault's relationship to psychoanalysis and his conception of critique. (shrink)

The fateful entanglements of psychoanalysis, cybernetics and digital media Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9570-0 Authors Leon Antonio Rocha, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This book’s basic argument is that the Freudian unconscious, far from constituting a radical break with the philosophy of consciousness, is merely the latest exemplar in a heritage of philosophical misunderstanding of the Cartesian cogito that interprets “I think, therefore I am” as “I represent myself, therefore I am” (in the classic interpretation of Heidegger, one of the targets of the book).

This paper presents Freud’s argument that the clinical process of psychoanalysis must continually combat the patient’s resistance to the analyst’s interpretations. It also presents systematically Wittgenstein’s counterargument. Wittgenstein contends that psychoanalytic interpretations are enormously attractive and that their “charm” predisposes the patient to accept them. He traces their charm to six sources, each of which is discussed.