BOOKS
Freudian
Frolics?
IN DEFENSE OF SCHREBER. SOUL MURDER AND PSYCHIATRY.
By Zvi
Lothane.
Analytic
Press. $59.95.
MADNESS AND MODERNISM. INSANITY IN THE LIGHT OF
MODERN ART, LITERATURE AND THOUGHT.
By
Louis A. Sass.
Basic
Books. $30.00.
It
is generally accepted that psychoanalysis is old hat, that biological and
phannaceutical cures for mental disorders are cheaper and more successful.
Yet scholars keep producing myriads of learned works about Freud and
his disciples - their motivations, families, friends , cultures, history, etc.
The names of Freud's followers who a decade ago were known only to a
few have become household words to many. Details of Freud's only visit
to America are being reinterpreted; boyhood and later letters are being
printed; relationships and theories are being rethought in connection with
subsequent discoveries and speculations. What accounts for this burgeon–
ing interest in the most microscopic details of psychoanalytic lore, and in
its gossip? Is it due to the fact that academics need to publish in order to
get tenure? If so, why pick on a subject that is considered part of history -
at a time when history itself is being discarded as yet another fossil in our
postmodem age? In other words, what makes for the fascination with the
origins of a theory which is allegedly dead, and whose radical origins ei–
ther are being refuted or - unconsciously - adapted?
In 1958, at a large conference organized by Sidney Hook at New
York University, the then-leading philosophers and psychoanalysts con–
cluded that psychoanalysis was so controversial and impossible to pin
down because it is so many things - therapy, theory, metapsychology, and
philosophy - whose realms get confused. Since then, however, these
strands have not been untangled. On the contrary: As America developed
into the therapeutic society
par excellence,
psychoanalytic applications and
explanations came to permeate every department of psychiatry and nearly
every humanistic discipline. And yet, psychoanalytic knowledge, despite
its chameleon-like qualities, is not cumulative: each time it purports to
answer one question, it opens up at least two new ones. Leaving aside
theoretical innovations, as well as psychoanalytic hermeneutics and
Lacanian and deconstructionist analyses - which by their very nature are
open-ended and lend themselves to interminable free associations - more
and more historical and philosophical studies as well are being produced
by
fairly mainstream, practicing psychoanalysts. Dissatisfied with earlier
