Maggie Doherty in Harper’s Magazine:
On the morning of February 2, 2023, I exited the subway at 57th Street to find the air growing colder. It had been a warm winter. But the first proper cold front was moving in, and I already felt underdressed. I propelled myself toward the warmth of the Midtown Hilton, where the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA, as it’s styled) was gathering for its winter meeting.
APsA has long been the institutional center of psychoanalysis in the United States. Founded in Baltimore in 1911 by, among others, Ernest Jones, Freud’s first biographer, its goals were to consolidate the profession and to standardize both training and treatment. Since then, the organization has overseen virtually every aspect of mainstream psychoanalysis in this country—research, education, and practice—and has resisted changes to many of its standards, casting a suspicious eye on analysts who proposed new ideas. In Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, Janet Malcolm described APsA as having an “iron hold” over psychoanalysis in the United States.
More here.
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