The Future of Psychoanalysis

A century years after the foundation of psychoanalysis it is necessary to re-evaluate its position in the modern world and think about its future.

The editor of this volume is guided by the conviction that psychoanalysis as a science of man is not only an important therapeutic procedure whose innovations have provided new insights into the human mind, but also a new and even more significant contribution to a theory of culture and critique of society.

The authors discuss the various new developments in therapeutic methods, and some of them refer to the discussions of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute during the 1970s.

In the debates about a crisis of psychoanalysis which have been going on in the psychoanalytical community since the 1980s, some have called for renewed solidarity with the traditional paradigmata, others demand radical reforms of the training methods and the ending of the self-ghettoization of the psychoanalytic institutes.

The authors of this book provide a thoroughgoing investigation into the nature of the crisis and propose ways to resolve it. They view the prognosis for psychoanalysis as a profession as not particularly brilliant and call for major changes in the rules of the psychoanalytic institutes in order to give their members greater freedom to form fresh ideas and discuss new adaptations of therapeutic methods to meet the changing expectations of the modern world.

However, their prognosis for psychoanalysis as a human science is more favourable, but they maintain that it will need a great amount of determination and radical reforms for psychoanalysis to act "as an important stimulant in cultural and social developments" (Freud, 1924).

What these reforms should look like is one of the main themes discussed in this volume.