Freudian Slip? The Changing Cultural Fortunes of Psychoanalytic Concepts.

Nick Haslam,Lotus Ye

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01489

Abstract

It is often argued that psychoanalysis has declined in prominence since its ascendance in the mid-20th century. To assess this claim we examined the trajectory of psychoanalytic concepts from 1900 to 2008 in the massive Google Books database. The changing relative frequency of a sample of English-language psychoanalytic terms was explored and compared to a sample of terms in French. The frequency of the English terms was further explored from 2008 to 2017 using the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The English terms rose steeply from the 1940s and declined steeply from the early 1990s. In contrast, the French terms rose steeply from the 1960s and plateaued from the 1970s. In addition, psychoanalytic terms were markedly more prominent in French since the 1960s. The findings are discussed in the context of historical trends in the reception of psychoanalysis in the Anglophone and Francophone worlds.

Highlights

Psychoanalysis is often said to be in retreat as an intellectual tradition, a clinical practice, and a cultural phenomenon
Within the Google Books corpus, English terms rose in relative frequency much earlier than French terms, indicating an earlier cultural incorporation of psychoanalytic ideas in the Anglophone world
The trajectory of the English terms showed a steep decline in the past quarter century that was not matched by a comparable decline among the French terms

Summary

Introduction

Psychoanalysis is often said to be in retreat as an intellectual tradition, a clinical practice, and a cultural phenomenon. Its supposed decline, celebrated by some and mourned by others, has been attributed to a variety of causes. The intellectual merit of psychoanalysis has been repeatedly challenged on scientific and political grounds. Its value as a clinical approach has been undermined on the one hand by the rise of pharmacological treatments and on the other hand by the advent of shorter-term and more “evidence-based” forms of psychotherapy. Its internal frictions have contributed to a growing marginalization and fragmentation of the psychoanalytic community (Stepansky, 2009). The influence of psychoanalysis may have lost ground to other perspectives on mind and behavior, such as cognitivism or positive psychology

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