THE NEW HISTORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS: TOWARDS A RICHER AND MORE NUANCED NARRATIVE

By 1939, W. H. Auden was able to publish a poem in memory of Sigmund Freud saying, “if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, to us he is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion.” Indeed, despite the opposition to Freud's new discipline from the medical establishment and some members of the public, psychoanalysis in its various proliferations had become popular in Europe as early as before World War II, and its terminology had become part of everyday language. More importantly, it propounded new possibilities for diagnosing personal problems and understanding sociopolitical issues. When Freud was asked in 1923 whether he would like to “psycho-analyze Europe in the hope of finding a cure for her ills,” he replied, “I never take a patient to whom I can offer no hope.” But as the twentieth century progressed, Freud and his followers developed ideas that engaged directly and indirectly with the personal and political questions of the age of catastrophes.