Description

Book Synopsis
How did psychoanalysis attain its prominent cultural position? How did it eclipse rival psychologies and psychotherapies, such that it became natural to bracket Freud with Copernicus and Darwin? Why did Freud 'triumph' to such a degree that we hardly remember his rivals? This book reconstructs the early controversies around psychoanalysis and shows that rather than demonstrating its superiority, Freud and his followers rescripted history. This legend-making was not an incidental addition to psychoanalytic theory but formed its core. Letting the primary material speak for itself, this history demonstrates the extraordinary apparatus by which this would-be science of psychoanalysis installed itself in contemporary societies. Beyond psychoanalysis, it opens up the history of the constitution of the modern psychological sciences and psychotherapies, how they furnished the ideas which we have of ourselves and how these became solidified into indisputable 'facts'.

Trade Review
'Attempts to debunk the legend in the 1970s and 80s failed. But a current assault, helped by a wealth of 'declassified' material, correspondence and critical studies, looks more likely to dismantle the monomyth … the legend is 'fraying from all sides'.' New Scientist

Table of Contents
Introduction: the past of an illusion; 1. Privatising science; 2. The interprefaction of dreams; 3. Case histories; 4. Policing the past; Coda: what was psychoanalysis?

The Freud Files An Inquiry into the History of Psychoanalysis

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    A Paperback by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Sonu Shamdasani

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      Book details

      Publisher Cambridge University Press
      Published 11/24/2011 12:00:00 AM
      ISBN-13 9780521729789
      978-0521729789
      ISBN-10 0521729785
      Also in:
      Clinical psychology

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      How did psychoanalysis attain its prominent cultural position? How did it eclipse rival psychologies and psychotherapies, such that it became natural to bracket Freud with Copernicus and Darwin? Why did Freud 'triumph' to such a degree that we hardly remember his rivals? This book reconstructs the early controversies around psychoanalysis and shows that rather than demonstrating its superiority, Freud and his followers rescripted history. This legend-making was not an incidental addition to psychoanalytic theory but formed its core. Letting the primary material speak for itself, this history demonstrates the extraordinary apparatus by which this would-be science of psychoanalysis installed itself in contemporary societies. Beyond psychoanalysis, it opens up the history of the constitution of the modern psychological sciences and psychotherapies, how they furnished the ideas which we have of ourselves and how these became solidified into indisputable 'facts'.

      Trade Review
      'Attempts to debunk the legend in the 1970s and 80s failed. But a current assault, helped by a wealth of 'declassified' material, correspondence and critical studies, looks more likely to dismantle the monomyth … the legend is 'fraying from all sides'.' New Scientist

      Table of Contents
      Introduction: the past of an illusion; 1. Privatising science; 2. The interprefaction of dreams; 3. Case histories; 4. Policing the past; Coda: what was psychoanalysis?

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