Theodor Reik: An appreciation.

Theodore Reik (1888-1969) is important and this appreciative symposium will tell why. His life and work are truly relevant to the history of the Division of Psychoanalysis. This appreciative symposium of seven papers by six distinguished authors pays tribute to Reik's special place in psychoanalytic history. The late historian of psychoanalysis writes of two interviews with Reik in 1965 and 1967 (see record 2006-20697-009). Dany Nobus, from London, who is at work on a biography of Reik, wonders what happened to Reikian psychoanalysis (see record 2006-20697-010). Martin Schulman, the former editor of The Psychoanalytic Review, reconsiders the question of lay analysis (see record 2006-20697-011). Zvi Lothane, a noted scholar, continues his interest in free association with an examination of Listening With The Third Ear (see record 2006-20697-012). Morton Israel, who has worked to reestablish Reik's reputation, writes about Reik's compulsion to confess (see record 2006-20697-013). Kyle Arnold, a graduate student, offers another view of The Compulsion to Confess (see record 2006-20697-014). Arnold's paper won the Stephen A. Mitchell Award for an outstanding paper by a psychology student. The final paper, by Kyle Arnold was also submitted independently of the symposium and is included (see record 2006-20697-015). It covers Reik's theory of listening. All of the contributors including myself, as a former student of Reik, have been touched in different ways by his genius. It is hoped that these appreciative papers will reintroduce Reik's ideas to a new generation of psychologist/psychoanalysts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Living in the shadow of the Freud family.

Reviews the book, Living in the shadow of the Freud family by Sophie Freud (see record 2007-07641-000). This book is fascinating for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is "written and edited" by Sophie Freud, Sigmund Freud's distinguished granddaughter, Professor Emerita of Social Work at Simmons College. The book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn more about the life and culture of the creator of psychoanalysis. The author challenges some of the assumptions made by Freud biographers, including the belief that his nursemaid stole pennies from the family, resulting in her firing and imprisonment. This book reveals the importance of writing. The author reminds us that the "psychological literature suggests that we should help old people to remember their childhood", and the book demonstrates the truth of this observation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relevance of Sigmund Freud for the 21st century.

This special issue of Psychoanalytic Psychology celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sigmund Freud on May 6, 1856. The 15 papers and one book review in different ways address the question of Freud's continued relevance. The contributors to this special issue approach the topic in multiple ways. Some authors stay close to the question, while other authors write on topics dear to them. All are, nonetheless, distinguished contributors to contemporary psychoanalysis and most need no introduction to the readership of this journal. Individual contributions to the special issue are summarized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A response to "The relevance of Sigmund Freud for the 21st century."

The relevance of Freud's ideas for the 21st Century had been discussed (Reppen, 2006; see record 2006-05420-001). Although most of the contributors to that compendium believed that they were, I suggest that a 'yes' or 'no' answer is not possible with regard to the corpus of Freud's ideas as a whole; each idea has to be evaluated separately. Freud's theorizing is built on two different bases: a psychological and a biological one. Not only do these eventuate in two different kinds of formulations throughout this theory, but sometimes even with regard to the same construct at different times in his writing. As a consequence, the assessment of the relevance of Freud's ideas for the 21st Century must be made construct by construct. A sampling of Freud's ideas about motivation, psychopathology and treatment were examined as to their contemporary relevance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Looking for Skinner and finding Freud.

Sigmund Freud and B. F. Skinner are often seen as psychology's polar opposites. It seems this view is fallacious. Indeed, Freud and Skinner had many things in common, including basic assumptions shaped by positivism and determinism. More important, Skinner took a clear interest in psychoanalysis and wanted to be analyzed but was turned down. His views were influenced by Freud in many areas, such as dream symbolism, metaphor use, and defense mechanisms. Skinner drew direct parallels to Freud in his analyses of conscious versus unconscious control of behavior and of selection by consequences. He agreed with Freud regarding aspects of methodology and analyses of civilization. In his writings on human behavior, Skinner cited Freud more than any other author, and there is much clear evidence of Freud's impact on Skinner's thinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Meeting Freud's family.

Reviews the book, Meeting Freud's family by Paul Roazen (see record 1993-99040-000). Over the years, Roazen has built a reputation as an expert on Freud. This is not a view to which many Freud scholars would be inclined to subscribe, but their opinions do not reach the general educated public to any appreciable extent. For most people, anything written about Freud that is thought to carry authority is considered informed comment on the psychoanalytic discipline itself. Roazen's new book is likely to be seized on for further enlightenment and, in view of its title, for inside information. "This book," he tells us, "is an attempt to re-create--based on my understanding of the place of psychoanalysis in intellectual history--the world of Freud's family life" (p. 16). What he wants to report is "the whole ambience surrounding these, people, and how their lives said something special about Freud" (p. 16). He wants to do this on the basis of personal interviews. The family Roazen met were two of Freud's daughters, Anna Freud (in 1965) and Mathilda (Hollitscher) Freud (1966), and one son, Oliver Freud (1966). Anna Freud granted him two interviews; the others appear to have seen him on only one occasion. He also interviewed Martin Freud's estranged wife, Esti, in the spring and summer of 1966. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Volume I. The Formative Years and the Great Discoveries, 1856-1900.

Reviews the book, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Volume I. The Formative Years and the Great Discoveries, 1856-1900 by Ernest Jones (see record 1954-03633-000). According to the reviewer, the first volume of the trilogy Dr. Jones promises is a book of unparalleled interest and importance for psychologists of all schools and theoretical persuasions. It presents an absorbing story which will never be more fully nor better told. The historical importance of Freud and his ideas hardly needs to be labored, and it is perhaps enough to say that this book is, in the reviewer's opinion, the best available introduction to an understanding of the man and of psychoanalysis as he developed it. For it presents the work as well as the life of Freud, and carefully traces the development of psychoanalytic ideas up to their first great climax in The Interpretation of Dreams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria.

The reviewer states that there has been a long line of independent efforts to document and appraise Freud's life. William McGrath's book is a sign that professional historians have entered the field in strength and with a determination to link Feud's work to its social and cultural surroundings. Professor McGrath is especially interested in the period of the 1890s but explores whatever evidence is available about the intellectual origins of Freud's ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Helene Deutsch: A psychoanalyst's life.

Reviews the book, Helene Deutsch: A psychoanalyst's life by Paul Roazen (see record 1992-97543-000). In this biography of over 391 pages, Paul Roazen describes the life of Helene Deutsch, seen by many historians of psychology as one of Freud's best-known and favourite students and a major contributor to psychoanalysis in her own right. Each of the three sections in the book concentrates on a major episode and station in her life: Poland, Vienna, and finally Massachusetts. Roazen carefully describes Helene's family background, her circle of friends, her romance with Felix Deutsch, and of course her relationship with Freud. The book reads much like a shortened psychoanalysis of Helene Deutsch herself. A good biography should not only describe an individual's contribution to a profession, but also this contribution should become understandable as an outgrowth of the cultural heritage, the Zeitgeist, and the unique life history of the individual. Roazen has clearly succeeded in doing that. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud: Appraisals and reappraisals: Contributions to Freud Studies, Volumes I, II and III.

As psychoanalysis nears its 100th birthday, the relevant scholarship should be far advanced. It is by now widely known how much original documentation about Freud is still sealed up at the Library of Congress at the request of the Freud Archives in New York. Still, the state of interpretative scholarship ought not to be as primitive as it is today. Practicing analysts use Freud for their own purposes, and in most journals passages from Freud are regularly cited anachronistically; little effort goes into trying to understand Freud in his own time, but rather isolated words of his are bandied about in the context of today's therapeutic concerns. It is in the midst of this regrettable state of affairs that these three volumes edited by Paul E. Stepansky are noteworthy and reviewed here. The various writers, only a few of whom are clinicians, seek to understand Freud impartially as an object of historical inquiry. Although the essays inevitably suffer from flaws, taken as a whole they represent an admirable shift toward the professionalization of Freud studies. The authors cannot be accused of writing to defend organizationally vested interests. Nor, on the whole, do they echo many of the most sectarian past shibboleths about the history of psychoanalysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of A child analysis with Anna Freud.

Reviews the book, A child analysis with Anna Freud by Peter Heller (see record 1990-97274-000). The tension between remembering and forgetting is the daily experience of the psychoanalyst. This takes place not only in the consulting room, but applies to our sense of ourselves and the history of psychoanalysis. Anna Freud died in October 1982. For almost 60 years she had been the heir apparent and then the leader of the international psychoanalytic movement. Yet, not even 10 years after her death, her name seems to have disappeared from psychoanalytic discourse and the contributions of her work and of child analysis to the body of psychoanalytic theory and technique are not discussed. As much as one can learn about the history of child analysis from this book, one must bear in mind the peculiar circumstances surrounding Peter Heller's analysis. Five of his classmates, including his future wife, and his teacher were also in analysis with Anna Freud. He vacationed with the Burlinghams and Anna Freud and wished to have Dorothy Burlingham as his mother. Peter's nanny later became a psychoanalyst and there was talk of Peter's father marrying Anna Freud. Given the multiplicity and complexity of these interrelationships, how could a termination have taken place? This book may be Peter Heller's continuation of his analysis, the exercise of his self-analytic function, and thus finally a termination of his child analysis with Anna Freud. In sharing his termination with us, Peter Heller gives us access to important aspects of our own history and so enables us to shape our future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud on the Acropolis.

The relevance of Freud for the present and the future is often questioned because of the assertion that "our patients have changed," that is, that Freud's theorizing is too rooted in the past, and theoretical or technical innovation is necessitated by the contemporary problems our patients bring to us now. An appreciative reading of an underappreciated late Freud paper, "A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis," suggests that Freud's theory is more flexible and broadly applicable than Freud's critics have described. Bridging the gap between an analysis of cultural and individual ills is always problematic, but as the "Acropolis" paper shows, Freud's theory can accommodate a wide variety of cultural and historical conditions because of the emphasis on compromise between competing generational claims, no matter what the specific content of the claims themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology and the National Science Fair.

Discusses the involvement of the American Psychological Association in the 1964 and 1965 National Science Fair-International. Psychologists are urged to come forward and offer to serve as judges at local science fair competitions and at the National Science Fair-International. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Association for the Advancement of Psychology: 1985.

This article discusses a merger between the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Advancement of Psychology (AAP), 1985. That "merger of certain AAP and APA functions" (Fox, 1985), as it came to be officially called, was accomplished on February 1, 1986. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Association for the Advancement of Psychology: 1977.

The Association for the Advancement of Psychology (AAP) is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1974 under the auspices of the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association. In the interest of psychology and the public, AAP interacts with Congress, the executive branch, and the judicial branch of the federal government. AAP is governed by a 24-member Board of Trustees selected equally, by mail ballot of AAP members, from the professional, public-social, and scientific sectors of psychology. Some major public-policy activities in 1977 included confirmation hearings on the new director of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration; Psychology-Medicare bills; the equal rights amendment; research, training, and service funding in the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Veterans Administration, the Office of Naval Research, etc.; welfare reform; antidiscrimination amendments in employee insurance plans; President Carter's Commission on Mental Health; a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission against the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals and the American Medical Association; services and provider status in CHAMPUS, the Veterans Administration, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and the military; governmental reorganization; the "Child Health Assessment Plan"; development of national health insurance proposals; the Community Mental Health Centers Act; rights of institutionalized persons; the Health Planning Act; educational and industrial testing; evaluation of persons with access to nuclear materials; the Professional Standards Review Organizations Act; the Consumer Protection Agency; federal workers' compensation; zero-based budgeting of federally funded programs; disability determination procedures in the Social Security Administration; protection of human subjects; and copyright law revision. AAP officials and staff also worked informally on a continuous basis with individual Representatives, Senators, and their staffs, as well as with the staffs of various committees in both Houses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

C. M. Louttit and Psychological Abstracts.

R. A. Littman indicates that L. T. Benjamin and G. R. VandenBos's history of Psychological Abstracts (see record 2006-22042-001) is a fine account of how the American Psychological Association has carried out its responsibility to provide access to psychological research and writing. Littman was pleased to see Mac Louttit's work as editor brought out, and he takes this occasion to give a bit more information about this gifted man's career. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

National psychology awards for excellence in the media.

National Psychology Awards for Excellence in the Media are given for outstanding performance in communicating psychology to the public. The media awards were presented at the APA convention. The winners were chosen from among several hundred entries. Eligible entries for this year's competition were published or broadcast between April 1, 1984 and April 1, 1985. The entries were judged by committees composed of psychologists and journalists. Each winner received a citation and $1,000, as well as an all-expense-paid trip to the convention in Los Angeles, California. The winners for Sustained Contribution; Book; Magazine; Newspaper; Radio; Television/Film; Television/Drama/Entertainment; and Honorable Mentions are presented here. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Go the distance II: How long is too long? Further thoughts on termination.

Presents the introductory remarks for the 13th annual spring meeting of the Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association in 1993. Hyman briefly touches on termination in psychoanalysis, and notes that, from the papers that will be presented, we can observe skilled and experienced psychoanalysts address and evaluate many of the considerations that are a part of the mutual ending (and/or the continuing) of the analytic work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

News & notes.

Presents information that may be of interest to Division 26 members. Included are a link to the Division's website, as well as instructions for subscribing to the electronic mail list; a draft of Division 26's program at the 2000 American Psychological Association Annual Convention; and information about the 31st annual meeting of Cheiron. Also included are a report on the fourth colloquium of the Groupe d'études Pluridisciplinaires d'Historie de la Psychologie, which focused on the history of child psychology, and notes about personal accomplishments of several Division members. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)