Miller, Michael H. "Sigmund Says: Analysts Expand Their Horizon By Going Beyond Father Freud." NEW YORK OBSERVER October 25, 2011.

1909, after a six-day journey from Vienna with his associates Carl Jung and Sándor Ferenczi, Sigmund Freud arrived in New York Harbor and spent a week sightseeing in the city. He had traveled to America to give a series of lectures on his “talking cure” at Clark University in Massachusetts. Before heading north, he spent time walking in Central Park and visiting the tenements of the Lower East Side. He saw the amusement rides on Coney Island and marveled at the antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum. Though his physical presence in the city was short-lived, New York has become Freud’s cultural home in the U.S. One hundred years later, the archetype of the neurotic, upper-middle-class Upper West Sider lying on the couch—perpetuated by everyone from Philip Roth to Woody Allen—is still how much of the public thinks of psychoanalysis. (“Tell me about your relationship with your mother…”) Several generations have been raised on the notion of psychoanalysis as New Yorker cartoon.  This is something that analytic institutions like the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute must reckon with.

Inside NYPSI’s headquarters on the Upper East Side, the cream-colored walls and dark brown carpet give off a sterile, medical feel, like a photograph of a hospital lobby from decades past. Posters and busts of Freud adorn the space. NYPSI, the oldest analytic institution in the country, celebrated its 100th anniversary this year. The faculty here have a reputation among fellow analysts as the most Freudian of Freudians, but they are nevertheless trying to keep up with changing times. . . .

http://www.observer.com/2011/10/sigmund-says-analysts-expand-their-horizon-by-going-beyond-father-freud/?show=all

Beardsworth, Sara. Review of Gunnar Farlsson, PSYCHONALYSIS IN A NEW LIGHT. NDPR (December 2010).

Karlsson, Gunnar.  Psychoanalysis in a New Light.  Cambridge: CUP, 2010.

Karlsson's book redefines the significance and purpose of psychoanalysis from a phenomenological perspective that conceives of psychoanalysis as a science (searching for truth) and "not merely as a method of treatment." His purpose is "to discuss the domain and conditions of psychoanalysis theoretically rather than from the perspective of clinical experience." This project is clearly executed with helpful chapter summaries along the way. Overall, it casts a powerful phenomenological searchlight upon the couch, levering the intelligibility of psychoanalytic theory off from dependence on its own empirical moment, the practice. We will consider the major fruits of this endeavor before questioning its risks.

Four specific objectives can be discerned in Karlsson's book: to ground psychoanalysis as a science phenomenologically, to present the Freudian subject as a temporalizing subject whose original striving is the striving for existence, to integrate narrative truth and historical truth in psychoanalysis, and to establish the function of self-consciousness in the analytic setting. . . .

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=22030.

Cfp: "Psychoanalysis and Politics: National and the Body Politic," Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society, Oslo, March 25-27, 2011.

We cannot, argued Gullestad in Plausible Prejudice (2006), understand the appeal of right-wing politics if we do not take into account how this rhetoric is underpinned by and embedded in rearticulated neo-ethnic ideas. She argued that politicians from non-right-wing populist parties have resisted specific ways of talking that are considered too extremist, rather than their underlying frame of interpretation.  Recent news stories appear to lend support to her view: Civil rights campaigners have accused governments, not just in France but across Europe, of adopting anti-immigrant and anti-Roma policies to win popular support. The issue of the so-called 'Ground Zero mosque' has caused agitation in the US. In Denmark, the nationalist party is now in government, while the Sweden Democrats have been battling up in the recent elections, appealing to hostility towards immigrants and Muslims in particular, employing the slogan Tradition and Security. In relation to the Wolf-man's phantasies, where the passive role he played towards his sister was envisioned as reversed, Freud (1914) wrote that they corresponded exactly to the legends by means of which a nation that has become great -and proud tries to conceal the insignificance and failure of its beginnings. Given that we are witnessing a revival of nationalist ideas, it is worth asking what fantasies these give voice to. One might think in terms of 'cultures of fear' (Moïsi 2009) in reference to recent developments in USA and Europe and of fantasies of fusion or 'imagined sameness' (Gullestad). Alongside the image of the nation as a mother and/or father, Reich (1933) called attention to the fantasy of the nation as a body. This metaphor is echoed in Money-Kyrle's (1939) haracterization of 'group hypochondria' in connection with the burning of witches and heretics. The Church, with the State united to it, could tolerate no foreign body within itself, and turned ferociously upon any that it found. The analogy may call to mind fantasies of scooping out, sucking dry, of poisoning, or of the other's supreme enjoyment. Where 'the foreign body' in Freud/Breuer's (1893-95)formulation designates the memory of the trauma, the analogy breaks down in that resistance is what infiltrates the ego. The treatment consists in enabling the circulation to make its way into a region that has hitherto been cut off. Conversely, one might think, along the lines of Butler's (2004) reflections on the obituary as an act of nation-building, the instrument by which grievability is publicly distributed, which calls attention not as much to the iconic images celebrated as to what violence and what losses are derealized. When the national public sphere is constituted on the basis of a prohibition on certain forms of public grieving, what has been cut off?

This is an interdisciplinary conference – we invite theoretical contributions and historical, literary or clinical case studies on these and related themes from philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, literary theorists, historians and others. Perspectives from different psychoanalytic schools will be most welcome. Please send an abstract of 200 to 300 words to psychoanalysis.politics@gmail.com by December 1st 2010.

Pub: Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher, eds. THINKING THE UNCONSCIOUS.

Nicholls, Angus, and Martin Liebscher, eds.  Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought.  Cambridge: CUP, 2010.

Since Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theorization around the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of the unconscious has exerted an enormous influence upon psychoanalysis and psychology, and literary, critical and social theory. Yet, prior to Freud, the concept of the unconscious already possessed a complex genealogy in nineteenth-century German philosophy and literature, beginning with the aftermath of Kant's critical philosophy and the origins of German idealism, and extending into the discourses of romanticism and beyond. Despite the many key thinkers who contributed to the Germanic discourses on the unconscious, the English-speaking world remains comparatively unaware of this heritage and its influence upon the origins of psychoanalysis. Bringing together a collection of experts in the fields of German Studies, Continental Philosophy, the History and Philosophy of Science, and the History of Psychoanalysis, this volume examines the various theorizations, representations, and transformations undergone by the concept of the unconscious in nineteenth-century German thought.

Read the contents here: http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521897532.

Cfp: "Function and Field of Clinical Concepts," 3rd Annual Meeting, International Society of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy, University of São Paulo, November 22-25, 2010.

Preference will be given to papers related to the following topics:

- Genealogy of clinical concepts.
- The philosophical conditions of the psychoanalytic notion of therapy.
- The relationships between clinic and philosophy, aesthetics, politics or social theory.
- The use of political, philosophical, and aesthetical concepts in psychoanalytic practice.
- The use of clinical concepts in philosophy, aesthetics, politics and social theory.
- The philosophical interpretation of psychoanalytical praxis (Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, Habermas, Honneth, Adorno, Rorty, Davidson and others).
- The meaning of concepts such as normality and pathology in psychoanalysis.
- What kind of reality is described by psychoanalytic categories such as neurosis, psychosis, perversion?
- The mind/body problem in clinical situations.
- The destiny of the moral concept of autonomy in psychoanalytic praxis.
- Power and weakness of language in psychoanalysis.

Some guest speakers include:

- Adrian Johnston (University of New Mexico )
- Christian Dunker (Universidade de São Paulo)
- Jean-Christophe Goddard (Université de Toulouse)
- Jeffrey Bloechl (Boston College )
- Juan Manuel Rodriguez (Universidad Autonoma del Mexico)
- Kazuyuki Hara (University of Tokio)
- Lorenzo Chiesa (Kent University)
- Marcus Coelen (Ludwig Maximilian Universität)
- Monique David-Ménard (Université de Paris VII)
- Paul Moyaert (Catholic University of Leuven)
- Patrick Guyomard (Université de Paris VII)
- Phillipe van Haute (University of Nijmegen)
- Richard Boothby (Loyola University)
- Richard Theisen Simanke (Universidade Federal de São Carlos)
- Rodrigo de la Fabian (Universidad Diego Portales – Chile)
- Russell Grigg (University of Melbourne)
- Vladimir Safatle (Universidade de São Paulo)
- Zeljko Loparic (Unicamp e PUC – São Paulo)

More information will soon be on-line at the ISPP website: http://www.sipp-ispp.net/.

"Self, Psychoanalysis and Society in the 21st Century," Gothenburg, Sweden, July 10, 2010.

The relationship of self and society has intrigued philosophers, psychoanalysts, and sociologists for over a century. In the early part of the last century, as economic conditions fostered alienation, malaise and despair, the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, among the first scholars influence by both the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, as well as Freudian psychology, began to investigate and theorize the social psychological factors that disposed certain people to Fascism. At about the same time, in the US, scholars such as Cooley, James and above all GH Mead began to think about socialization and the formation of self. These early perspectives played a major role in the rise of symbolic interactionism. These theories have seen a number of developments and transformations. While the work of Reich, Fromm, Adorno and Horkhiemer was groundbreaking, Marcuse, Habermas and Jessica Benjamin have added to that tradition. Surely the work of Althusser, Lacan and Foucault has added a number of other concerns and dimensions. For the past few years, a number of scholars have gathered together before the American Sociological Association meetings to discuss the vagaries of contemporary selfhood, largely, but not exclusively from a psychoanalytical perspective. This year, given the many European and International scholars that will be attending the ISA, we decided to move our venue to Gothenburg, Sweden, and schedule our meeting the day before ISA meets. The meeting will be sponsored by RC36 Alienation Theory and Research. We would like to invite all interested scholars to join us in what have been among the most stimulating meetings. Please send an abstract of about 200-250 words to Lauren Langman, Llang944@aol.com and Lynne Chancer, lchancer@hunter.cuny.edu. Please send by April 30, 2010.

Oldeschulte, Rudy. Review of Sergio Benvenuto, et al., eds. IN FREUD'S TRACKS. MOR (July 2009).

Benvenuto, Sergio, and Anthony Molino, eds. In Freud's Tracks: Conversations from the Journal of European Psychoanalysis. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield--Jason Aronson, 2008. This collection of interviews, previously published in the Journal of European Psychoanalysis, is both fascinating and unique in its array of contributions from philosophers, psychoanalysts, historians, intellectuals, and literary critics. Several of the contributors have also practiced as political activists, a 'revolutionary philosopher', and even an economist. Each is tied in some respect to psychoanalysis -- either clinically or theoretically. Many of the contributor's works were not available in English prior to their publication in the JEP. Indeed, many of the individuals interviewed are likely unknown to many, if not most, American readers. Contributors come from Europe, from South America, and a few from individuals that have since immigrated to the United States -- and the conversations are offered with a view toward that premise of the psychoanalytic enterprise of inquiry and understanding. This book is divided into three sections, with fifteen individual interviews. The three sections attempt to divide the interviews into historical perspectives, psychoanalytic views from the philosophical and political arena, and lastly from clinical practice and societal issues. The goal of the collection is based on the philosophy underlying the Journal itself -- that of bringing together the divergent, even "fractious" views about the theoretical alliances and the clinical practice of psychoanalysis. The editors hope to "help propagate multiple forms of thinking into a galaxy ready, and yearning, to be revitalized." . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=5021&cn=395.

"Neuropsychoanalysis: Who Needs It?," 10th International Neuropsychoanalysis Conference, Paris, June 26-29, 2009.

Neuropsychoanalysis has been the major international development within psychoanalysis in recent decades. However, opinions differ as to whether it will have a positive or negative impact on the future of the discipline. At this congress, the leading exponents of the new approach will present their findings and discuss their points of view with some of France’s outstanding psychoanalytic and neuroscientific authorities. The Unconscious, child development, and the clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis in particular will be discussed. The congress will be an historical event, the impact of which will be felt for many years to come. Speakers at the Congress include: György Gergely, Claude Gottesmann, André Green, Catherine Morin, Lionel Naccache, Georg Northoff, Philippe Rochat, René Roussillon, Howard Shevrin, Mark Solms, Daniel Stern, Daniel Widlöcher and Yoram Yovell. Visit the conference webpage here: http://www.neuro-psa.org.uk/npsa/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=61.

Cfp: "French Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalysis in French: Language, Literature, Culture," University of South Carolina, March 18-20, 2010.

38th Annual French Literature Conference. Psychoanalysis in France has a long and rich history. From the early work of Marie Bonaparte, the interventions of the surrealists, and the dissertation of a young medical student named Jacques Lacan in the 1920s to the heights of the École Freudienne, the expulsion of Luce Irigaray, and Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus in the 1970s, psychoanalysis played a central role in French intellectual life throughout the twentieth century. Indeed, whether in the work of Lacanian and postLacanian intellectuals and analysts (such as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Jacques Derrida), or in that of psychoanalytic skeptics such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault, specifically French debates on and within analysis have shaped the culture of literary, philosophical, cinematic, and historical studies around the globe. At the same time, the postcolonial world of Francophone literature and film have radically called into question the very universality of the Freudian family romance, forcing us to pose the question, in the words of a famous book title: is there an 'Oedipe Africain'? Finally, both inside France and beyond its borders, there is a rich tradition of psychoanalytic interpretation of the classic texts of French literature. This conference seeks to pose the following questions: is there a specifically French form of psychoanalysis and what are its characteristics; does the psychoanalytic narrative also have purchase on the larger world of Francophonie or are such pretensions to universalism necessarily ahistorical and imperialistic; what is the future of psychoanalysis as method of interpreting French literature and film and will its insights continue to produce new understandings or has its time now passed? Twenty-minute papers addressing these subjects should be sent by e-mail to Allen Miller (pamiller@sc.edu) by November 1, 2009. All papers accepted for this conference will be published in volume 38 of French Literature Series (FLS).

Hourigan, Daniel. "Review of Matthew Sharpe, et al. UNDERSTANDING PSYCHOANALYSIS." MOR October 7, 2008.

Sharpe, Matthew, and Joanne Faulkner. Understanding Psychoanalysis. Chesham: Acumen, 2008. Understanding Psychoanalysis is a brief introduction to the beginnings and basic operations of psychoanalytic thought. Written by Matthew Sharpe and Joanne Faulkner, the book charts the story of psychoanalysis: from the early case study of 'Anna O.', through the renovations and development of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, to the critiques of psychoanalysis and its possible futures. The style is pedagogic, offering key point summaries and revision questions with a clear intent to educate the reader in the psychoanalytic method and history, and its criticisms. Yet the key figure of the entire volume is clearly the progenitor of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, to whom a generous amount of space is allotted early on. The authors of Understanding Psychoanalysis, Sharpe and Faulkner, are two thinkers to have emerged from the healthy ('continental') philosophy scene in Melbourne, Australia. Aside from this volume, their respective publications hover around a diverse range of thinkers including Agamben, Zizek, Nietzsche, Schmidt, and others. And this scope allows Sharpe and Faulkner to consistently provide a variety of reference points for Freud's developments, which is a necessity for a reader seeking out psychoanalysis in our contemporary era of oceanic information. . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4509.

Reisz, Matthew. "Off the Couch, Back on its Feet." TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION June 12, 2008.

The American Psychoanalytic Association recently set up a task force with an ambitious goal - to "reach and captivate the 10,000 best minds of the next generation with the power of psychoanalytic ideas". Clearly worried that its influence was in decline, it employed Jonathan Redmond and Michael Shulman to research "access to psychoanalytic ideas in American undergraduate institutions". Their report was recently published in the association's journal. After looking at the course catalogues of 150 highly ranked colleges and universities, the authors note that "psychology departments typically offer little coursework on psychoanalysis ... most often it is mentioned dismissively in textbooks describing psychoanalytic ideas as scientifically invalid, or in misleading, incomplete or simplistic ways". Readers could well conclude that it was just "a desiccated and dead tributary of the psychological mainstream". Yet this is only half the story because "six times more courses featuring psychoanalytic ideas are available outside psychology departments than in them". Many are in the humanities and social sciences, where "basic psychoanalytic concepts have been undergoing significant transformation". As a result, the report points out, "clinically orientated analysts might find themselves on unfamiliar ground", particularly when courses are "steeped in Lacanian concepts or postmodern theorising". . . . Read the rest here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402337&c=1.

PUB: Mieszkowski, Jan, ed. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE POLITICAL. POSTMODERN CULTURE 18.1 (2007).

Articles:

• Jan Mieszkowski, Introduction: Analogy, Terminable and Interminable
• Alan Bass, The Mystery of Sex and the Mystery of Time: An Integration of Some Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Perspectives
• Brett Levinson, In Theory, Politics Does not Exist
• Laurence A. Rickels, Endopsychic Allegories
• Eleanor Kaufman, The Desire Called Mao: Badiou and the Legacy of Libidinal Economy

Reviews:

• Joseph Keith, What Went Wrong? Reappraising the "Politics" of Theory. A review of Timothy Brennan, Wars of Position: the Cultural Politics of Left and Right. New York: Columbia UP, 2006.
• Joshua Kates, Philopolemology? A review of Alain Badiou, Polemics. Trans. Steve Corcoran. London: Verso, 2006.
• Michael G. Malouf, When Were We Creole? A review of Charles Stewart, ed., Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory. Walnut Creek: Left Coast, 2007.
• Catherine Taylor, Open Studios: Rachel Blau Duplessis's Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work. A review of Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work. Tuscaloosa: Alabama UP, 2006.
• Melinda Cooper, Homeland Insecurities. A review of Randy Martin, An Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.

Please visit: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/current.issue/.

"Classical Myth and Psychoanalysis," Institute of Advanced Studies, University of London, September 3-6, 2009.

Since Freud published the Interpretation of Dreams in 1900 and utilised Sophocles' Oedipus Rex to work through his developing ideas about the psycho-sexual development of children, it has been virtually impossible to think about psychoanalysis without reference to classical myth. Since that time psychoanalytic theorists of various persuasions have continued to work with myth, viewing it as a resource that is less restrictive than individual literary texts, bound up as they are with issues of authorship and temporality. The mobility of myth offers psychoanalysis an alternative to the culturally specific and provides a framework within which to think through issues such as the redefinition of the personal and the radical alterity at the heart of what is most familiar. This capacity of myth to transcend the context of any particular retelling and to continue to transform the understanding of the present has long been recognised by Classicists for whom it has been a notoriously slippery object of study. Classical myth has more often been interpreted as encoding a loosely conceived ancient mentalité than as evidencing explicitly configured psychological truths, but the tension between its potency in a particular context and its multivalent potential has repeatedly been stressed. And throughout the twentieth century experts on the ancient world have sometimes turned to the insights of psychoanalytic criticism to supplement and inform their readings of classical myth and literature. Just as psychoanalysis has developed a canon of classical myth (e.g. Oedipus, Narcissus, Prometheus, Antigone, Greek tragedy in general) so Classical Studies has developed its own canon of texts that seem to attract psychoanalytically-informed analysis (e.g. Greek Tragedy, philosophy and Roman poetry in particular). In some cases this seems to be because of a perceived 'fit' or coherence between the literary work and the mode of analysis, for example the fragmented articulation of desire in Catullan verse or the glorification of the irrational in Euripides' Bacchae; in others it is inspired by an influential reading of a classical text by a particular critic - an obvious example here is Lacan's analysis of Sophocles' Antigone in the seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. The aim of this conference is to probe the limits of these mutually influencing canons and to explore the potential of texts so far excluded from them. Why is it, for example, that Greek myth and literature continues to attract more attention in this context than their Roman counterparts? Why have certain forms of psychoanalysis tended to dominate whilst others have been almost completely ignored? What constitutes an authoritative version of a psychoanalytic or a classical myth? Are there new forms of criticism of classical myth and literature which will harmonise with developing forms of psychoanalysis as we move forward in the new millennium? Suggested topics for panels include:

• Foundational narratives
• Fantasy and the Past
• Religion Getting the Myth Wrong
• Text and Object
• 'And'
• Group Psychology and the Collective Archetypes
• Colonialism Creativity & the Visual Arts

Invited speakers include:

• Richard Armstrong (University of Houston, Texas);
• Page DuBois (University of California, San Diego);
• Eric Gunderson (University of Toronto);
• Bruce King (Vassar College);
• Michaela Janan (Duke University);
• Jonathan Lear (University of Chicago);
• Paul Allen Miller (University of South Carolina);
• Jill Scott (Queens University, Ontario);
• Robert Segal (University of Aberdeen);
• Sonu Shamdasani (Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London);
• Victoria Wohl (University of Toronto).

Proposals for panels are welcomed as are papers on relevant psychoanalytic or mythic texts. Please send a title and half-page abstract by 1st September 2008 to Vanda Zajko & Ellen O'Gorman, Department of Classics & Ancient History, University of Bristol, BS8 1TB v.zajko@bris.ac.uk; e.c.ogorman@bris.ac.uk. This conference is organised under the aegis of The Bristol Institute for Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/birtha/centres/institute/.

"Symposium on Kelly Oliver's THE COLONISATION OF PSYCHIC SPACE." SYMPOSIA 4.1 (2008).

Oliver, Kelly. The Colonisation of Psychic Space: a Psychoanalytic Social Theory Of Oppression. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2004. Extract Commentaries by: Shannon Winnubst, Stacy Keltner Reply by Kelly Oliver Further information is here: http://web.mac.com/shaslang/SGRP/Symposia.html.

Weilnbock, Harald. "'The Trauma Must Remain Inaccessible to Memory': Trauma Melancholia and Other (Ab-)Uses of Trauma Concepts in Literary Theory."

Eurozine March 19, 2008. The concept of psycho-trauma has gained widespread currency in literary theory in recent years. Yet what might be sign of hope for a more interdisciplinary approach to psycho-trauma on closer inspection turns out to be ambiguous, according Harald Weilnböck. Literary theory, he writes, often distorts what psycho-trauma means in clinical terms and, while gaining interdisciplinary cachet, repeats patterns of self-protection and transference. In the first instalment of this long and thought-provoking essay, the fictional Dr Goodheart puzzles over Manfred Weinberg's assertion that "trauma must remain inaccessible to memory". Such statements contradict Dr Goodheart's clinical experience that enabling patients to access their memory is essential to successful therapy. Reading Elisabeth Bronfen's essay on Hitchcock's Marnie, Dr Goodheart's consternation grows. Bronfen, he suspects, romanticises psycho-trauma in order to provoke the given gender order and, in linking trauma with pleasure, implicitly licences the acting out of destructive patterns of interaction. Read the rest here: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-03-19-weilnbock-en.html.

Cohen, Patricia. "Freud Is Widely Taught at Universities, Except in the Psychology Department." NEW YORK TIMES November 25, 2007.

PSYCHOANALYSIS and its ideas about the unconscious mind have spread to every nook and cranny of the culture from Salinger to South Park, from Fellini to foreign policy. Yet if you want to learn about psychoanalysis at the nation’s top universities, one of the last places to look may be the psychology department. A new report by the American Psychoanalytic Association has found that while psychoanalysis — or what purports to be psychoanalysis — is alive and well in literature, film, history and just about every other subject in the humanities, psychology departments and textbooks treat it as “desiccated and dead,” a historical artifact instead of “an ongoing movement and a living, evolving process.” . . . The primary reason it became marginalized . . . is that while most disciplines in psychology began putting greater emphasis on testing the validity of their approaches scientifically, “psychoanalysts haven’t developed the same evidence-based grounding.” As a result, most psychology departments don’t pay as much attention to psychoanalysis. At the same time, wondrous advances, in neuroscience, for instance, have attracted new students and resources, further squeezing out psychoanalysis. Outside the university setting, the refusal of most insurance firms to pay for extended psychoanalytic therapy has limited its reach. . . . But Mark Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Death of Sigmund Freud,” said, “Freud to me is a writer comparable to Montaigne and Samuel Johnson and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, writers who take on the really big questions of love, justice, good government and death.” Scholars in the humanities, he said, use Freud “skeptically and provisionally and don’t think of him as scientist at all, but as an interpreter.” . . . For the full article, go here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/weekinreview/25cohen.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.