Freud's Influence Research Articles

Unlearning: Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge

Unlearning: Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge

Review of Freud and Said: Contrapuntal Psychoanalysis as Liberation Praxis by Robert K. Beshara

This book review discusses the theoretical, political, ethical, and clinical ramifications of Robert K. Beshara's Freud and Said: Contrapuntal Psychoanalysis as Liberation Praxis, through an exploration of Freud's influence on Said, the interrelations of psychoanalysis and de-/post-colonialism, the psychoanalysis of coloniality, and the decolonization of psychoanalysis.

Is the Influence of Freud Declining in Psychology and Psychiatry? A Bibliometric Analysis.

Sigmund Freud is occasionally perceived as outdated and his work no longer relevant to academia. The citing papers (CPs) that cited Freud works were collected from Web of Science and analyzed. The 10 most common research areas of the CPs were noted, and the overall volume of the respective bodies of literature were retrieved. I computed the annual percentage of the respective bodies of literature that cited Freud. On a separate note, I computed the annual percentage of citations coming from psychology and psychiatry. Results based on 42,571 CPs found that psychology accounted for over half of the citations to Freud. The percentage of psychology papers citing Freud declined gradually from around 3% in the late 1950s to around 1% in the 2010s, in an extent of −0.02% per year over the entire survey period spanning across 65 years from 1956 till 2020 (P < 0.001). In psychiatry, a similar decline was observed, from around 4–4.5% in the late 1950s to just below 0.5% in the 2010s, in an extent of −0.1% per year (P < 0.001). However, a reverse trend was observed for psychoanalysis literature, which generally increased from 10–20% before the 1980s to 25–30% since the 2000s, in an extent of +0.2% per year (P < 0.001). Meanwhile, the annual percentage of CPs coming from psychology and psychiatry was decreasing by 0.4% per year (P < 0.001). Bibliometric data supported the notion that Freud's influence was on a decline in psychology and psychiatry fields.

Some reflections on madness and culture in the post-war world.

This article examines the treatment of madness as a theme in drama, opera and films, concentrating its attention for the most part on the period between World War II and the 1980s. These were the years in which psychoanalysis dominated psychiatry in the USA, and so Freud's influence in the broader culture forms the central though not the sole focus of the analysis.

‘Streetcar’ Provides Analysts With Much to Ponder

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Professional NewsFull Access‘Streetcar’ Provides Analysts With Much to PonderJoan Arehart-TreichelJoan Arehart-TreichelSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:18 Mar 2011https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.46.6.psychnews_46_6_8_1AbstractTennessee Williams is unquestionably one of America's great playwrights. His play "A Streetcar Named Desire," which opened on Broadway in 1947, received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. In 1951 it was adapted as a major motion picture. A group of psychoanalysts put "A Streetcar Named Desire" on the couch, so to speak, at a session of the American Psychoanalytic Association meeting in New York City in January. The session was headed by two analysts from Chicago—Arnold Tobin, M.D., and Eva Lichtenberg, Ph.D. Analysts, trainees, and psychiatry residents also joined in the discussion. Although the panel and audience examined various facets of the play, three devices used in it especially attracted their attention: the family, a stranger, and flashbacks. The plot of the play is essentially this: A woman named Blanche takes a streetcar named "Desire" (because its destination is a street with that name) to the French Quarter in New Orleans to visit her sister, Stella. Before long Stella's husband, Stanley, and Blanche are on an emotional and physical collision course. Stanley can't tolerate Blanche's pretensions and tries to unmask her in cruel, violent ways. Finally he rapes her. Soon after, she has a nervous breakdown and is committed to a mental hospital. Some people believe that Williams modeled Blanche after his own sister, Rose, who had schizophrenia and who spent much of her life in a mental hospital. So this play concerns a family—perhaps in ways Williams' own family—and as one analyst commented, "The American playwright Arthur Miller once said that all great plays are about family." And indeed, that may be one reason why this play is great, another analyst observed. It divulges how all families are delicate social structures that can be unbalanced easily. Regarding the use of a stranger in the play, the stranger is Blanche, Tobin commented. She disrupts the lives of Stella and Stanley. Williams also used the stranger device in some of his other plays as well, and so did the ancient Greeks, Tobin said. The reason that use of a stranger is such a potent dramatic device, Tobin continued, is that the arrival of a stranger is a universal experience for all of us. It can be the birth of a child, the birth of a sibling, an illness, a financial setback; it can acutely upset our desires and needs. "You can also find the use of a stranger in a number of Chekhov plays," another analyst observed. "Isn't that what drama is all about? Someone new or something new arrives and challenges people, and you watch how they deal with it." As for the use of flashbacks in the play, a good example is one explaining why Blanche acts the way she does, one analyst said. Flashbacks are also used in many modern plays, but they are not in Shakespeare's plays, he pointed out. The reason that flashbacks are found only in modern plays, he conjectured, may be due to Freud's influence—that is, the use of introspection to understand why people act as they do. As valuable as the use of a family, a stranger, or flashbacks is for plays, such devices alone cannot make plays great, the analysts, trainees, and psychiatric residents present tended to agree. "For a play to be great, you need not just ideas, but emotional tension," Tobin said. Another concurred: "For me, the affective tone of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is deeply tragic. Stella and Stanley become reunited, but at Blanche's expense. She is taken away to a mental hospital." ISSUES NewArchived

Psychoanalysis and Detective Fiction: a tale of Freud and criminal storytelling

Much has been written about Freud's influence on popular culture. This article addresses the influence of literature on Freud's psychoanalytical theory, specifically the role that modern detective fiction played in shaping Freudian theory. Edgar Allan Poe gave Freud the literary precedent; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes gave him the analytical model. In turn, the world of crime story-telling embedded Freudian theories in subsequent forms, spinning the tales of crime into a journey into the human mind. As these tales were popularized on the silver screen in the early 20th century, psychoanalytical ideas moved from the lecture halls into the cultural mainstream.

A perfectly staged ‘concerted action’ against psychoanalysis

An eyewitness account provides evidence of a significant clandestine effort to neutralize the legitimacy and authority of psychoanalysis. In a letter, the witness confirms the existence of a perfectly staged concerted action among German psychiatrists against Freud's influence in 1913. Their congress in Breslau was meant to present the united front of German psychiatrists, who were going on record as being against psychoanalysis and, in that context, to give Eugen Bleuler, a leading psychiatrist, whose (however half‐hearted) support for psychoanalysis had alarmed his colleagues, a public opportunity for back‐pedalling. The letter shows that Freud and his allies were not the only ones who tried to manage an intellectual movement by using informal networks and ‘behind the scenes’ manoeuvring.

Carlo Levi: Narciso e la costruzione della realtà by Rosalba Galvagno

MLR, 101.4, 2006 II49 on the presence, in Colonna's canzoniere, of themes relating to three famous draw ings prepared for her by Michelangelo; but this issue is far from being exhausted, and Brundin's edition will surely encourage new efforts in this direction. To provide only a first example, Michelangelo's sculpture, too, could shed light on the enigmatic sonnet which concludes Vittoria's collection of religious poems, both in the Vatican manuscript and in the Valgrisi edition. In these verses Vittoria has doubts about the possibility of establishing an authentic form of communication through poetry: 'Di giovar poca, ma di nocer molta I Ragion vi scorgo' (Sonnet I03, p. I39: 'I perceive little reason why they [my verses] should be of use, I but much evidence that they do harm'). In Sonnet 45 (p. 93) earthly forms, even those created by the hand of the holiest of painters, Saint Luke, appear to her as 'partial and imperfect'. So in Sonnet 73 (p. I I5) she concludes: 'Thus I inscribe upon these pages a dark shadow Iinstead of that dazzling sun, and I speak to others here Iof heavenly things with broken and inadequate words.' The artistic metaphor leads quite naturally from these 'voci rotte e frali' (and rotte is preferable to the roche, 'hoarse', of the Valgrisi printing; see Bullock's edition, S i: 65) toMichelangelo's unfinished Prigioni. LICEOCLASSICOSTATALE 'CARLO BOTTA', IVREA MARCOMAGGI Carlo Levi: Narciso e la costruzione della realta. By ROSALBAGALVAGNO. Florence: Olschki. 2004. 22I Pp. ?22. ISBN 88-222-5407-4. This original and important book consists of eight essays, seven of which have been previously published, together with an appendix consisting of three texts by Levi (two of which are previously unpublished) and Calvino's I974 Presentazioneto seven lithographs by Levi on Cristo si efermato a Eboli. The first of these Levian texts is a poem, dated 7May I940, on the nymph Dafne, who appears inRosalba Galvagno's third chapter, an essay on Tolstoy which relates to the eighth chapter, 'La felicita e i romanzi', and a little-known interview first published in the review Scuola viva in I97I. Full details of the original publication of the relevant chapters are given in a 'premessa' (p. io). That it is still possible at this stage to produce unpublished poems by Levi suggests that we urgently need a good critical edition of his poetry. Galvagno refers to her book as 'questo lavoro' and 'otto studi' (p. 7) and states that 'indaga le determinazioni etiche e poetiche che hanno ispirato la "costruzione della realta" nell'opera di Carlo Levi' (p. 7). Do these eight essays, conceived and published separately, constitute a unitary work? I think they do, thanks to their re current themes. Words and images, for Levi, are complementary, used in a process of discovery and self-discovery: as he commented in an interview quoted here, 'Con la pittura, forse, sono andato scoprendo me stesso, con la scrittura ilmondo' (p. 8). This suggests that Levi's writing may be less narcissistic, in the pejorative sense, than some of his more hostile critics have allowed. The Calvino essay reproduced here (pp. 209-I 3) deals very effectively with the issue of Levi's supposed narcissism. One of the merits of Galvagno's work is that she ranges freely over all Levi's work, from his earliest poetry to his last writings, including apparently 'minor' or 'occasional' works such as introductions and prefaces. This means that she offers us a series of closer analyses of Quaderni a cancelli, that strange work written when the author was suffering from a detached retina, than we have elsewhere. Textual analysis is in fact Galvagno's strong point. It is true that she occasionally misses a trick-failing to notice, apparently, that what she describes as 'una lirica' (p. 36) prefacing fourteen lithographs entitled Gli amanti (Turin: Galleria La Bussola, I95 2) not only has fourteen lines but is a sonnet, the rhymes of whose tercets mirror each other (CDE/EDC). Levi ismaking a narcissistic witticism in verse. She also prefers II50 Reviews to stress Freud's influence on Levi and does not give due emphasis to Jung's, failing...

History of AphasiaFreud as an aphasiologist

Between 1891 and 1901, Sigmund Freud published both psychoanalytic and neurological works. This review analyses the interactions between Freud's On the interpretation of the aphasias (1891) and the development of psychoanalytic concepts, as well as Freud's theoretical views on brain–mind interrelations and his neurolinguistic theory. It is pointed out that in his aphasia book, Freud developed elements of a neurobiological theory of cognition and behaviour that became important for the theoretical foundation of psychoanalysis. Although Jackson, whom Freud regarded highly, had understood that people communicate by propositions, Freud followed Wernicke in that the word and the word concept were the basis of language. This assumption guided the interpretation of associations in psychoanalysis. For aphasiology, Freud is one proponent among others who criticised mechanistic localisationist theories. His major obstacle was the lack of linguistic theories. Freud's influence on aphasiology was rather limited, mainly because his book was hardly read, to his dismay.

Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union

This book is the first comprehensive history of psychoanalysis in Russia from the last years of the tsars to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Using rare Russian sources and newly opened Soviet archives, Martin A. Miller explores Sigmund Freud's influence in Russia during the twentieth century, discusses the lives of the Russian Freudians, and explicates for the first time original Russian psychoanalytic case studies.

Dreaming of freud: Ferenczi, freud, and an analysis without end

Abstract The present paper tries to show that Ferenczi had developed a full-blown transference neurosis towards Freud already before his analysis with the latter. Special attention is given to one dream of Ferenczi's, dreamed shortly before the beginning of the analysis, and showing Ferenczi's desire for freeing himself from Freud's influence, his difficulties in doing so, his urgent plea to Freud to help him to become more independent from that very Freud, his submission to him, and the hope that a psychoanalysis with Freud would help him to find a way out of all this. To this powerful and contradictory message, Freud reacts by consenting to an analysis. Freud, however, underestimated the effects of the personal entanglement and overestimated his ability to control the ensuing situation-an analysis that continued to be “at an end,” but not “terminated,” or terminated, but without end.

Degradation and Forbidden Love in Edith Wharton's Summer

In Edith Wharton's 1917 novel the relationship between the heroine, Charity Royall, and lover, Lucius Harney, depicts a kind of feminine sexual awakening that is profoundly original in literature. As Cynthia Griffin Wolff notes in introduction to the book, Summer is not the first Bildungsroman to focus on this awakening to maturity as it occurs in a woman's life; however, it is the first to deal explicitly with sexual passion as an essential component of that (x). precise way in which this sexual relationship is entered into by these young people has significant psychoanalytical ramifications. Specifically, need for a certain degradation of Charity to occur before he can find sexually accessible, his subconscious need to separate feelings of sexual desire and attraction from feelings of genuine tenderness and high esteem, and Charity's own need to experience as a forbidden pleasure, constitute driving forces in the revelation of their relationship within the novel. Freud's 1912 essay The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life proves insightful in a close analysis of the relationship between Charity and Harney - particularly with regard to the factors that contribute to perspective and involvement. assumption that Wharton knew Feud's work is almost inevitable. Like Freud, Wharton exhibited great appreciation for the works of Arthur Schnitzler (Lawson 46, 129), the late-nineteenth-century Vienna-born Jewish doctor who is known for epitomizing Viennese impressionism in his literary works (Johnson 171-72), and whose stories, novels, and plays revealed a perceptiveness with which they laid bare the inner, mainly the sensual, world of their characters (Gay 130) As well, both Freud and Wharton admired the works of Goethe and Schiller. Freud could quote [them] by the hour (128), while Wharton reaffirmed her loyalty to the older German literature and the German language by immersing herself in the correspondence between the two (Lewis 394) 'Goethe always schillered when he wrote to Schiller, didn't he?' she observed (394). Even more persuasive is the fact that Wharton often mentioned and discussed Freud among friends during excursion to Germany in 1913, as well as after return to Paris that same year (352, 355). Freud's influence on Wharton then, though not unequivocally documented, is apparent in that they often expressed similar concerns about cultural expectations and restrictions, and in that they were both interested in critiquing the attitudes to premarital and extramarital sexual experience, [and] the precarious relation between parents and children that they perceived in the societies in which they lived (134). tells the story of the romance that develops between Charity Royall, a relatively inexperienced young girl of humble beginnings, and Lucius Harney, an ambitious young man from the city. Charity is living with guardian, Mr. Royall, in North Dormer, Massachusetts, when Harney comes to stay with his cousin, Miss Hatchard, for the summer. After their coincidental meeting in the library where Charity works part-time, Harney and Charity begin to see more and more of each other until their friendship evolves into a torrid affair. romance of this seemingly mismatched couple breaks, or stretches, many conventions of romantic love stories and in the process creates a new picture of female sexuality (French xlii). First of all, the relationship has only progressed so far as giving Charity first real kiss when Charity is publicly degraded by Mr. Royall. scene of the first kiss is in itself a foreshadowing of the sexual ecstasy that is soon to follow for the young couple. Having spent the day together in Nettleton, Charity and Harney are sitting in the bleachers at a Fourth of July fireworks display when the kiss takes place. As Charity leans back to view the display, she feels Harney's knees against head (100). …

Freudian Principles in Everyday Life

An exercise helps students appreciate the extent of Sigmund Freud's influence on modern American culture. Students indicate their agreement or disagreement with 15 statements reflecting the traditional Freudian perspective. Statements and students' responses are the catalyst for a discussion of psychoanalytic principles and Freudian influence. One graduate and three undergraduate introductory psychology classes found the exercise to be thought provoking, helpful, and useful in making them realize Freud's influence on American culture.

Freud's influence on American political science.

In an effort to assess which of Sigmund Freud's theories have had an influence on political scientists in the United States, the author conducted a survey of the American Political Science Association. The results of the survey showed that two concepts, the concepts of repression and the unconscious, were deemed most useful for political analysis and/or teaching. This paper traces the origins and infusion of these two constructs into American political thought.

Freud in exile: psychoanalysis and its vicissitudes

In June 1938 Sigmund Freud and his family arrived in London, exiles from Nazi-occupied Austria. Now, seventy years later, Freud's exile, together with the general exodus of psychoanalysts from the German-speaking world, can be seen as a turning-point in modern cultural history. The displacement of the centre of gravity of the psychoanalytic movement from Vienna to London (and thence - via English translations - to the United States and the wider world) helped make Freud's theories into one of the most influential intellectual systems of the twentieth century. This book, with contributions from some of the world's most eminent Freud scholars, marks the fiftieth anniversary of Freud's exile and discusses its impact on the development of psychoanalysis. The first section examines the specifically Viennese-Jewish origins of Freudian theory and the nature and effects of the psychoanalytic exodus. One chapter considers Freud's library and his private reading, a study facilitated by the Freud Museum in London. Section two considers the English reception of psychoanalysis. The role of Ernest Jones in transmitting Freud's ideas is examined, and there are chapters on Adrian Stokes, Wilhelm Stekel and the fate of Freudian analysts in exile, particularly in the United States. Closely linked to the cultural displacement of psychoanalysis is the issue of the translation of Freud's writing. Section three considers problems involved in such translation and retranslation - and the question of revising the Standard Edition of Freud. The final section identifies perspectives for the future which derive from the continuing psychoanalytic debate. It includes chapters on changing theories of childhood since Freud, Freud and the question of women and feminism, psychoanalysis and anthropology, and Freud's influence on other forms of psychotherapy. With full scholarly references, documents and illustrations from the Freud archives, many of them reproduced here, this volume demonstrates how Freud's exile (fulfilment of his wish 'to die in freedom') stimulated the growth of psychoanalysis in the English-speaking world. It provides an important reassessment of Freud's contribution to twentieth-century thought.

From Berggasse XIX to Central Park West: the Americanization of psychoanalysis, 1919-1940.

Freud's influence in America can be explained in part by the greater openness of American medicine during a crucial period of its development from 1910 to 1940. American medicine transformed psychoanalysis from a humanistic, social service European movement into a prosperous speciality with an appropriate theory that altered Freud's conceptions of aggression and the ego. The subsequent identification of psychoanalysis with the psychiatric establishment and the proliferation of rival therapies has made it vulnerable to changes in professional interests and cultural styles.

Psychology in the Early Works of Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann's debt to Sigmund Freud is well-known. It is an important part of the larger question of Freud's influence on twentieth-century literature in general. Conversely, it was two major essays by Mann, “Die Stellung Freuds in der modernen Geistesgeschichte” (1929), and “Freud und die Zukunft” (1936), which did much to establish Freud's reputation as one of the great thinkers of the century. Mann referred to psychoanalysis in many of his works, as witness the caricature of an analyst in Der Zauberberg. He freely admitted its importance for him, as in his confirmation of the apparent Freudianism of the Joseph stories. It remains far from clear, however, just when he first encountered Freud's ideas, and how much he learned from them. It would be particularly desirable to know with certainty whether the new psychological theories came as exciting revelations to the youthful Mann, or whether they merely confirmed conclusions which he had already intuitively reached. The latter possibility is suggested, inter alia, by the interesting anticipations of Freudian ideas in the early works of Arthur Schnitzler. Mann himself remained strangely vague and noncommittal concerning his first acquaintance with the new psychology. His reticence on this point contrasts with the openness and relish with which he discussed the chronology and extent of his debts to Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Wagner.

Freud: The Mind of the Moralist.

Now a classic, this book was hailed upon its original publication in 1959 as An event to be acclaimed . . . a book of genuine brilliance on Freud's cultural importance . . . a permanently valuable contribution to the human sciences.-Alastair MacIntyre, Manchester Guardian This remarkably subtle and substantial book, with its nicely ordered sequences of skilled dissections and refined appraisals, is one of those rare products of profound analytic thought. . . . author weighs each major article of the psychoanalytic canon in the scales of his sensitive understanding, then gives a superbly balanced judgement.-Henry A. Murray, Sociological Review tremendous scholarship and rich reflections fill his pages with memorable treasures.-Robert W. White, Scientific American Philip Rieff's book is a brilliant and beautifully reasoned example of what Freud's influence has really been: an increasing intellectual vigilance about human nature. . . . What the analyst does for the patient-present the terms for his new choices as a human being-Mr. Rieff does in respect to the cultural significance of Freudianism. His style has the same closeness, the same undertone of hypertense alertness. Again and again he makes brilliant points.-Alfred Kazin, The Reporter

Telepathy in Psychoanalysis

DR. H. J. EHRENWALD, formerly of Prague, has directed attention to the possibility of telepathy in the psychoanalytic situation (Brit. J. Med. Psych., 20, Pt. 1; 1944). It is well known to psychical researchers that since Freud mentioned this factor in his new series of introductory lectures, his pupils have obediently followed him and are themselves now at pains to discuss the question in relation to their own patients. In this paper, Dr. Ehrenwald extends these observations not only regarding telepathy from patient to analyst but also from analyst to patient. He mentions some of Freud's own cases, including the famous case of his patient, Mr. P., which Freud thought to be very suggestive, but which few psychical researchers would regard as worthy of serious consideration. What is, however, of more interest in Dr. Ehrenwald's paper is his obvious anxiety to warn his colleagues of the possibility of telepathy occurring during sittings with their patients, and the implications which can be derived from it. From the point of view of the psychical researcher this attitude is somewhat diverting, since for so many years psychoanalysts have declined to learn what parapsychologists could have taught them and now, having become almost convinced through Freud's influence that telepathy exists, present examples of it which exhibit so many sources of error that it is clear that they still have little appreciation of the problems on which they write. If Dr. Ehrenwald's paper disturbs still further their complacency, it will have performed a useful service.

Freud's influence on western thinking and culture.

FREUD'S INFLUENCE ON WESTERN THINKING AND CULTURE Lawrence Frank; American Journal of Orthopsychiatry