The Exclusion of Psychoanalysis in Academic and Organized U.S. Psychology: On Voodooism, Witch-Hunts, and the Legion of Followers

Abstract

ABSTRACT This contribution focuses on expanding understanding of anti-psychoanalytic attitudes in psychology. Psychoanalysis and related approaches have been openly vilified and discounted within academic and organized American psychology. Socio-historical antecedents of this antagonism provide a framework for understanding how the marginalization of psychoanalysis has been maintained despite the significant empirical, historical, and socio-cultural evidence supporting it. I argue that such marginalization has contributed to professional monoculture, failure to provide consumers with access to effective forms of treatment, and disconnection from critical multicultural frameworks grounded in psychoanalytic tenets. Patterns of psychoanalysis’ exclusion highlight the field’s difficulties in addressing historically situated ideological biases and disputes over resources.