----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Maxwell Young To: Multiple recipients of list PSA-PUBLIC-SPHERE Sent: Sunday, November 07, 1999 6:11 PM Subject: PPS: _Unfree Associations_ by Douglas Kirsner
New book announcement:
UNFREE ASSOCIATIONS: INSIDE PSYCHOANALYTIC INSTITUTES
by Douglas Kirsner
This is the most thorough, revealing and illuminating account of the inner workings of psychoanalytic institutions that has ever been written. It comprises ground-breaking, in depth, recent political histories of the four leading psychoanalytic institutes in the United States - New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles - based on the author's extensive field work. Kirsner also provides dramatic insights into what psychoanalysts and their institutions have contributed to what has gone wrong with psychoanalysis. The result is a fascinating series of portraits of these institutes - their organisations, their cultures, their ways of mediating conflict and how they have survived. In addition to archival research, the book is built on scores of interviews with prominent psychoanalysts who were often protagonists in the stories of their institutes. Many themes emerge in Kirsner's gripping yet scholarly accounts. Most importantly, he demonstrates that issues surrounding the right to train are central to psychoanalytic disputes. In his study of the Los Angeles institute he also shows how a doctrinal dispute between Kleinians and ego psychologists got interwoven with group dynamics. Moreover, Unfree Associations examines the problems of psychoanalysis, a humanistic discipline that has been touted as a science on the model of the natural sciences but has been organized institutionally as a religion. Interest in this book should not be confined to psychoanalysts. It is a rich set of case studies in the vicissitudes of group relations, with the ironic twist that the members of these organisations profess to have special insight into human nature and how people get along with one another.
Douglas Kirsner, PhD is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and History of Ideas at Deakin University, Australia, where he teaches philosophy and psychoanalytic studies. He founded the annual Deakin University Freud Conference which he directed for twenty years. He is the author of The Schizoid World of Jean-Paul Sartre and R. D. Laing, and numerous articles about psychoanalysis.
Comments on Unfree Associations:
'It is a work of scholarship that is unparalleled in its field. Truly a magnum opus.' - Charles Brenner, MD, author of An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis and The Mind in Conflict
'Using extensive interviews and documents Kirsner has written am arresting, definitive account of the internal politics o psychoanalytic institutes and their sometimes paralysing effects on policy and research.' - Nathan Hale, Ph.D. author of Freud and the Americans and The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States
'Douglas Kirsner has produced a pioneering study of the operations of psychoanalytic Institutes. Unfree Associations traces the consequences of various organisational arrangements on their vital functions. It also presents a veritable nosology of the ills that beset analytic education. Kirsner's case studies are focused on four of the most influential Institutes in North America. The data base he has collected is both convincing and astonishing. His conclusions transcend the problems of psychoanalytic education, for they are equally relevant to the fate of psychoanalysis as a body of knowledge.' - John E. Gedo MD, author of Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents,; Spleen and Nostalgia: A Life and Work in Psychoanalysis ; Beyond Interpretation. and The Languages of Psychoanalysis.
'As a survivor of a paradigmatic split (Boston 1973), I can attest to Prof Kirsner's sensitivity and precision, in collecting many accounts of these traumatic events. He has recorded dozens of sympathetic interviews, in which each informant reports his or her own version of what happened, and he has reviewed hundreds of documents. From these conflicting and complex details, he has woven a seamless web that is both scholarly & extremely readable. 'From this brilliant historical reconstruction, the general as well as the scholarly reader will learn how complex & easily forgotten are the details of relatively recent events. As a sympathetic interviewer of the analysts who survived these traumatic experiences, each with a different view of what happened, Kirsner has created a unified narrative that makes lively and dramatic reading. Historians of psychoanalysis will also be grateful for the wealth of factual detail he has preserved.' - Sanford Gifford, MD, Chair of the History and Archives Division of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
"I should be embarrassed about having known so little about American psychoanalysis, but I am just grateful to Douglas Kirsner for having done all the hard work which has brought up so much that is new. Kirsner is balanced and impartial; his interviewing has yielded a rich storehouse of material which makes a wonderful book.' - Paul Roazen, PhD, author of Freud and his Followers; Erik H. Erikson: The Power and Limits of a Vision and Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk
"Kirsner's study of the dissensions in the most expansively successful psychoanalytic culture in the world is not only an extremely impressive piece of social and historical research, but is also a revelation concerning the local causes of bitter feuds and squabbles amongst Freud's most orthodox progeny. Whether the issues were money, professional style, parochial empire-building or the future developments of clinical technique and scientific theory, Kirsner gives a clear and unbiassed account of the at times bitter struggles. It will be absolutely indispensable to all those interested in the fate of professional societies, scientific institutions and the rise and fall of American psychoanalysis.' - John Forrester, PhD, Reader in History and Philosophy of the Sciences, University of Cambridge. Author of Dispatches from the Freud Wars; Truth Games and The Seductions of Psychoanalysis
This is a new book, published by Process Press in 2000, and is available immediately. Pb Pp. viii+324 Price 19.95 British pounds sterling +1.50 postage and packing ISBN1-899209-12-3
You can order this book directly from the publisher by post, fax or email: Process Press Ltd. 26 Freegrove Road London N7 9RQ
Fax. +44 (0) 171 609 4837
Email: pp at rmy1.demon.co.uk Payment by cheque in British pounds sterling or by credit card, giving name on card, billing address, card type (Visa/Mastercard/Amex), card number, expiry date. We have had no problems about card numbers on the internet, but if you are worried, you can order by post or send the card number and expiry date to a separate email address: robert at rmy1.demon.co.uk If you do this, make up a unique number for the order to pp at rmy1.demon.co.uk and give it again when you send the card number and expiry date to pp at rmy1.demon.co.uk Robert Maxwell Young, Professor of Psychotherapy & Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Cresc., Sheffield S10 2TA. http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Co-Director, Bulgarian Institute of Human Relations & Honoured Professor, New Bulgarian University, Sofia. Home: 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ. tel. +44 171 607 8306 Private Practice, Consultation, Supervision Web Site & Writings http://www.human-nature.com r.m.young at sheffield.ac.uk, robert at rmy1.demon.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/19991109/b510f3bd/attachment.htm>