502
PARTISAN REVIEW
cated to imagine that one panel can solve problems that have not
been solved for years or for decades. But we hope at least to air the
main issues. I should say too that we have tried to make the
discussion as representative as possible by having as many different
views as we could without, however, creating a free-for-all.
We have asked a number of people to act as discussants, that is,
to
open the discussion. Each of the speakers here will talk for about
fifteen minutes. And then we are going to ask them to control their
natural tendencies to argue with each other so that we can call on the
discussants. After that, perhaps, they can have the last word.
The first speaker will be Dr. Joel Kovel, who is Associate
Professor of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
He is the author of
White Racism: A Psycho-History,
and more
recently, of a book I am sure you have all seen,
A Complete Guide to
Therapy.
Dr. Kovel.
Joel Kovel:
Anyone who has observed the psychoanalytic scene for a
while with a reasonably open eye can readily ascertain that this oddly
venerable profession (since it is well less than a century old) is facing
two rather vexing dilemmas. From the one side it appears that
psychoanalysis-at least in America-has for some time ceased
to
be
in the vanguard of thought; even as its ideas have become so widely
diffused as to permeate the general culture, it has lost that cutting
edge, that astonishing sense of penetration which characterized
Freud and the first generation of his followers . And from the other
side, psychoanalytic practitioners have for a number of years found it
increasingly problematic to make a living by their skill. Either the
market has become saturated, or it is actually diminishing as people
look to other forms of treatment for their emotional ills.
In
any case
there is no doubt that the prestige of psychoanalysis is lower in
psychiatric training centers than it was a decade or two ago; fewer
psychiatric residents apply for psychoanalytic training now than did
then; and those who do undertake that arduous route are onl y rarely
able to look ahead
to
a career spent in the exclusive practice of
analysis. The patients simply aren't there; and those who are, all too
often can't afford it. So goes the shop talk; and such, it seems, is the
drift of things.
The trend is by no means absolute. Substantial numbers of
people in the academic and artistic community remain deepl y
influenced by psychoanalytic thought and seek further training.
Meanwhile, those who command the skill-whether obtained medi-
