Skeptics about psychoanalysis have prevailed over partisans in recent years.  Yet, very few of those who dislike psychoanalysis have troubled themselves to give serious thought to its enduring cultural meaning and value.  An exception is found in Eli Zaretsky’s book, Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis.  Zaretsky, an historian at the New School, begins his study by outlining three great promises of modernity—autonomy, women’s equality and democracy—and then follows their trajectory through the lens of psychoanalysis during the period of the second industrial revolution, roughly the 1890s to the 1970s.  Psychoanalysis is, according to Zaretsky, emblematic of this era; indeed, he ventures the bold proposal that psychoanalysis occupies a comparable position of influence to the second industrial revolution that Puritanism occupied to the first industrial revolution.   

Like Puritanism, psychoanalysis represents a “turn inward” that produced “a new language” which unwittingly supported a massive social change:

Calvinism urged people to look inside themselves to determine whether they had been saved, but it wound up contributing to a new discipline of work, savings and family life.  Freudian introspection aimed to foster the individual’s capacity to live an authentically personal life, yet it wound up helping to consolidate consumer society .

As the first great theory and practice of personal life, psychoanalysis came into existence at the same time that a new middle class was emerging, new stages of human development were being delineated (such as infancy, childhood and adolescence), and women were claiming new roles.   Psychoanalysis articulated beliefs that were particularly in sync with consumer society: “Like electricity, film and the automobile—the characteristic innovations of the second industrial revolution—the Freudian unconscious symbolized the freedom of the individual from the confines of space and time.”  Although Zaretsky does not substantiate this point adequately, he is quite successful at forcing us to appreciate that the cultural importance of psychoanalysis transcends whether or not it is an outmoded kind of therapy.    

Zaretsky’s focus on the history of psychoanalysis is detailed and illuminating.  He traces the emergence of an international movement from a “Männerbund,” a group of young men bound together by their devotion to a charismatic father figure.  Fresh assessments of the saga of Freud’s various splits with his collaborators are provided.  For example, Zaretsky depicts Alfred Adler’s commitment to a progressive social and political agenda and spotlights other, less known radical figures such as Otto Gross, who imagined that psychoanalysis would be the soul of future revolution.  Zaretsky draws attention to the issue of anti-Semitism in discussing the Freud- Jung’s relationship, quoting Jung’s charming insight that Freud “had applied Jewish categories to Christian Germans and Slavs.  Zaretsky does not hesitate to document unhealthy tendencies, however, that were implicit in psychoanalysis from the beginning: the eminent psychiatrist Bleuler opted against joining the first international association because of a concern about the “for us/against us” mentality that he claimed was antithetical to science.

The evolution of new psychoanalytic theories in relation to social and cultural changes receives specific attention in this book.  Zaretsky’s discussion of ego psychology, which thrived in New York and became the dominant theoretical perspective in the thirties and forties, follows along well-established lines: that the move to focus on the ego, rather than the id, led psychoanalysis in a direction that accommodated social convention.  This reading conceals an admirable aspect of ego psychology: that it sought to make psychoanalysis less isolated and to have a more productive relationship with psychology and allied fields.  Still, it is evident that the expansion of psychoanalytic institutions was accompanied by increasing dogmatism.

Zaretsky does a superb job of reflecting on the unfolding of object relations theory, the main alternative to ego psychology, within the post-war welfare state in Britain.  Object relations theory championed a shift in focus within psychoanalysis from the father to the mother, from castration to separation, and from authority to dependence.   The figure of the mother, invoked as a symbol of how the British came together as a family during the war, was extended to be the symbol of the welfare state.  Object relations theory was used partly to support a conservative agenda that reaffirmed women’s place at home.  Yet, at least in Klein’s version of this theory, women’s sexuality was portrayed authentically and progressively.

Freud’s complex relation to America is a special focus here.  From his youth, Freud had contemplated a move to America, and, after the enormous inflation at the end of World War I, Freud actually hired a tutor to teach him English in anticipation of having to emigrate.  He was able to remain in Vienna because the majority of his patients after the war were American who paid in dollars and had analyses that were conducted in English.  Freud had become a world-renown figure.  Indeed, Freud’s fame was so established by 1924 that Samuel Goldwyn offered him $100,000 to come to Hollywood in order to create “a really great love story.”  Freud declined, but his colleagues Abraham and Sachs served as consultants for Pabst’s 1926 film, “Secrets of the Soul” (from which Zaretsky takes his title).  A decade later, Freud declined William Randolph Hearst’s offer to come to Chicago “at any price” to analyze the famous murderers, Leopold and Loeb.

A deep ambivalence pervades Freud’s attitude to American life.   He contrasted his own “very grave” philosophy to what he claimed was Americans’ “lack of emotional investment in genuine understanding.”   Although Freud appreciated the reception that his work was meeting in the US compared to in Europe, he worried that his creation would be embraced and diluted.  Freud vigorously protested the fateful decision of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1925 to regulate the profession by requiring a medical degree, specifically warning that the contribution of other fields thereby would be threatened.

Psychoanalysis enjoyed a heyday during the fifties, when it dominated psychiatry and was widely depicted in films and other forms of popular culture.  By the sixties, however, psychoanalysis found itself under attack by feminists and the New Left for its complacency and conservatism.  Zaretsky illustrates that contemporaneously radical thinkers emerged who reinvigorated psychoanalysis, like Norman O. Brown, Herbert Marcuse and Juliet Mitchell.  Ultimately, Zaretsky spares no malice in suggesting that having allied itself with “homophobia, misogyny and conservatism,” the psychoanalytic establishment failed to sustain a progressive vision of modernity.  

Zaretsky is right to argue that psychoanalysis put forth a new notion of autonomy that was personal, not moral, and that challenged the distinction between public and private.  It is debatable, though, whether psychoanalysts encourage patients to value their personal lives in a way that can be equated with self-involvement.  Zaretsky is also right to criticize psychoanalysis for being slow to respond to and even resisting feminism (although he makes only fleeting acknowledgement of so-called relational psychoanalysts who have made feminism crucial to their thinking).  Zaretsky’s point that psychoanalysis backed away from having an alliance with social democracy, retreating into the posture of professional neutrality, requires qualification.  The neutrality of clinicians is easy to malign; without it, though, one must reckon with how it is possible to help patients whose political views are at odds with one’s own.  As Jonathan Lear has suggested, psychoanalysis is concerned with a crucial, underlying aspect of democracy, open-mindedness, the capacity to tolerate different and multiple points of view.

Zaretsky’s tale is one of promise, apparent success and decline.  It is certainly true that psychoanalysis no longer is as prominent as it once was in the mental health world.  Analytic institutes lack patients and many have a moribund feel.  While it is unavoidable that the analytic world is, pardon the expression, shrinking; it remains to be seen what the future will bring.  Psychoanalysts are, however belatedly, moving in the direction of seeking empirical support for their work and are deferring to new developments in the sciences.  Psychoanalytic psychotherapists remain devoted to fathoming the subjective experience of patients, which distinguishes their work from mental health professionals who readily see themselves as technicians and moral experts.  

Psychoanalysis, as Zaretsky maintains, can be defined by its commitment to self-exploration and self-reflection.  Insofar as these things have gone out of fashion, we might have more reason to worry about our culture than to criticize psychoanalysis.  The book might have grappled more extensively, in fact, with how psychoanalysis represents values that are at odds with consumer society.  Nevertheless, Zaretsky deserves praise for writing a provocative book that avoids the zealotry that has characterized most previous books about psychoanalysis.