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are derived from a specific historical context simply to transcend that
context and leave its historical origins altogether behind. That, it
seems to me, is one of the dilemmas that psychoanalysis is con–
fronted with today-as it is a dilemma of all of us who share a
historical identity that we cannot put aside but that is becoming in
the light of current developments increasingly problematical.
William Phillips:
Steven, before we go on to our discussants, I just
thought I would comment that you raised a lot of interesting
questions, but I think, and maybe some people will take this up, that
two of your propositions might be arguable.
Steven Marcus:
Only two?
William Phillips:
Only two. And that is that when you speak of
psychoanalysis as a product of bourgeois culture, the inevitable
question is whether let's say, if you had a democratic socialist society,
there would be no need for psychoanalysis, there would be no
neuroses that need treatment of that kind.
The other implication, I think, that could be argued is that you
speak of it as a bourgeois science, and the question in my mind is
whether, let us say, sexual functioning is only a bourgeois virtue.
And whether the cure of sexual malfunctioning is part of a science
that can be called only bourgeois. Anyway, I think that these are
some of the interesting questions that are raised by Marcus's paper.
Now as I said, we have eleven discussants. I don't know if you
are all here. I will read off the names, and whoever gets up first will
speak first.
(Laughter)
Otherwise you put the onus on me of giving priorities
to
some
of you. Here are the eleven: Dr. Ethel Person; Dr. Arnold Cooper; Mr.
Norman Birnbaum; Dr. Robert Lifton; Dr.
e.e.
Beals; Dr. Earl
Wittenberg; Mr. William Barrett; Dr. Kurt Salzinger; Ms. Sonia
Rudikoff; Dr. Stuart Schneiderman; and Dr. Henry Lowenfeld. All
right, go ahead.
Kurt Salzinger:
It
seems that I have just heard two of what I consider
orthodox views of psychoanalysis, presenting all the reasons for the
crisis in psychoanalysis. I think they did show the exclusivism and
went on to say that that is not the fault of the psychoanalyst, but of
the culture; that if only the culture were a little better, a little more
interested in bolstering honesty, then perhaps it would be able to
profit from psychoanalysis. At the same time, we are told that
psychoanalysis equals humanism. And yet we are told that there is a
