A People's History of Psychoanalysis

It has been decades since Freud fell out of favour, not only in mainstream psychiatry but also in radical thought, where both he and Lacan were accused of sexist and class biases. A People's History of Psychoanalysis refuses to accept this growing depoliticization of a formerly revolutionary field.

Florent Gabarron-Garcia shatters the comfortable narrative of psychoanalysts as armchair theorists placidly interpreting family complexes sheltered in their consulting rooms. Recalling Freud's radical moments (such as his promotion of free clinics in Weimar Germany), or lesser-known figures including the Marxist Feminist psychoanalyst Marie Langer, his new history delves into how revolutionary ferment has cross-fertilized the exploration of the unconscious.

A People's History of Psychoanalysis is for those who wish to resist the conformist, therapist-centered, and repressive management of madness under contemporary capitalism.

Introduction

I. Freud looks to the East. Vera Schmidt and Psychoanalysis in the Land of the Soviets

II. Wilhelm Reich, from the Vienna Polyclinic at Sexpol in Berlin

III. The future of Freudian pessimism

IV. Marie Langer: from Vienna in the 1930s

to Latin America in the 1970s

V. Of the Catalan municipality

at the La Borde clinic

VI. Revival of revolutionary psychoanalysis

in Germany: the Heidelberg experience

Conclusion: For another psychoanalysis