The Failure of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Fromm

📗 No contemporary body of thought, with the possible exception of pragmatism, has played a more important part or exerted a more pervasive influence in the shaping of the 20th century American mind than has psychoanalysis. The United States is now, and for the past fifty years has been, the adopted homeland of psychoanalysis. While Vienna was its birthplace and Zurich its initial proving ground, in America alone did it succeed in permeating not only the psychiatric profession but the entire national culture as well. At the same time the United States has been the scene of the internal theoretical denouement of psychoanalysis-from its classic formulation to revision, reformation, and reconstruction. In the present work the author aspires to tell the story of psychoanalysis in our country, to evaluate the various forms it has taken, to determine the nature and extent of its influence, and to present a possible alternative approach to the great problem of the human mind in illness and in health.