Progress in Psychoanalysis

Is psychoanalysis in decline? Has its understanding of the human condition been marginalized? Have its clinical methods been eclipsed by more short-term, problem-oriented approaches? Is psychoanalysis unable (or unwilling) to address key contemporary issues and concerns?

With contributors internationally recognized for their scholarship, Progress in Psychoanalysis: Envisioning the Future of the Profession offers both an analysis of how the culture of psychoanalysis has contributed to the profession’s current dilemmas and a description of the progressive trends taking form within the contemporary scene. Through a broad and rigorous examination of the psychoanalytic landscape, this book highlights the profession’s very real progress and describes a vision for its increased relevance. It shows how psychoanalysis can offer unparalleled value to the public.

Economic, political, and cultural factors have contributed to the marginalization of psychoanalysis over the past 30 years. But the profession’s internal rigidity, divisiveness, and strong adherence to tradition have left it unable to adapt to change and to innovate in the ways needed to remain relevant. The contributors to this book are prominent practitioners, theoreticians, researchers, and educators who offer cogent analysis of the culture of psychoanalysis and show how the profession’s foundation can be strengthened by building on the three pillars of openness, integration, and accountability.

This book is designed to help readers develop a clearer vision of a vital, engaged, contemporary psychoanalysis. The varied contributions to Progress in Psychoanalysis exemplify how the profession can change to better promote and build on the very real progress that is occurring in theory, research, training, and the many applications of psychoanalysis. They offer a roadmap for how the profession can begin to reclaim its leadership in wide-ranging efforts to explore the dynamics of mental life. Readers will come away with more confidence in psychoanalysis as an innovative enterprise and more excitement about how they can contribute to its growth.

“"Books and essays on psychoanalysis seem to alternate between those that focus on its future and those that focus on its decline and marginalization. Is our current state of pluralism a sign of health and vitality or of decay and fragmentation? Progress in Psychoanalysis: Envisioning the Future of the Profession is a serious and rigorous effort to grapple with the tensions of the future of psychoanalysis under pressure to meet our health care system's demands for access, cost containment, research evidence, and public accountability. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic education."- Lewis Aron, Ph.D. , Director, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis "This book, with broad reach, addresses a pervasive problem of closed-mindedness within the culture and among the "citizens" of the psychoanalytic community. That closed-mindedness has been shaken in recent decades, but still includes much excessive either/or thinking about theory, technique, training, research, and what psychoanalyst's can do. And the book addresses this head-on in its theoretical sections, and by concrete illustration in its sections on training, research, and work beyond the one-to-one in-the-office. It is very much a worthwhile read for the already-openminded and a necessary read for all the others. Having discovered in my own Clinical/research/teaching life the value of such open-mindedness. I found it fascinating again and again as I read through it and recommend it highly."- Fred Pine, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York City "This book is a breath of fresh air. Perhaps a life-saving one. What unites its chapters is a recognition of two closely related facts: (1) that psychoanalysis is not important -- it is about something important -- and (2) that psychoanalysis is not about itself -- it is about the human mind, an object of study that we share with other disciplines."- Mark Solms, Chair of Neuropsychology, University of Cape Town and Research Chair, International Psychoanalytical Association "The profession of psychoanalysis faces immense challenges to its viability. This stunning text captures both the internal and external challenges and it offers solutions. In three sections, "Perspectives', "Research and Training", and "Beyond the Consulting Room", the book addresses the need to integrate disparate theoretical perspectives while maintaining clarity about core principles, to realize the relevance of psychoanalytic psychotherapy research, to develop meaningful collaborations with allied disciplines and to get smart about how the profession engages with health care reform. This book offers a path to a fundamental re-orientation of the profession and how it can thrive."- Harriet L. Wolfe, M.D. , President, American Psychoanalytic Association; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCSF”

"Books and essays on psychoanalysis seem to alternate between those that focus on its future and those that focus on its decline and marginalization. Is our current state of pluralism a sign of health and vitality or of decay and fragmentation? Progress in Psychoanalysis: Envisioning the Future of the Profession is a serious and rigorous effort to grapple with the tensions of the future of psychoanalysis under pressure to meet our health care system’s demands for access, cost containment, research evidence, and public accountability. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic education."-Lewis Aron, Ph.D., Director, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis

"This book, with broad reach, addresses a pervasive problem of closed-mindedness within the culture and among the "citizens" of the psychoanalytic community. That closed-mindedness has been shaken in recent decades, but still includes much excessive either/or thinking about theory, technique, training, research, and what psychoanalyst’s can do. And the book addresses this head-on in its theoretical sections, and by concrete illustration in its sections on training, research, and work beyond the one-to-one in-the-office. It is very much a worthwhile read for the already-openminded and a necessary read for all the others. Having discovered in my own Clinical/research/teaching life the value of such open-mindedness. I found it fascinating again and again as I read through it and recommend it highly."-Fred Pine, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York City

"This book is a breath of fresh air. Perhaps a life-saving one. What unites its chapters is a recognition of two closely related facts: (1) that psychoanalysis is not important -- it is about something important -- and (2) that psychoanalysis is not about itself -- it is about the human mind, an object of study that we share with other disciplines."-Mark Solms, Chair of Neuropsychology, University of Cape Town and Research Chair, International Psychoanalytical Association

"The profession of psychoanalysis faces immense challenges to its viability. This stunning text captures both the internal and external challenges and it offers solutions. In three sections, "Perspectives’, "Research and Training", and "Beyond the Consulting Room", the book addresses the need to integrate disparate theoretical perspectives while maintaining clarity about core principles, to realize the relevance of psychoanalytic psychotherapy research, to develop meaningful collaborations with allied disciplines and to get smart about how the profession engages with health care reform. This book offers a path to a fundamental re-orientation of the profession and how it can thrive."-Harriet L. Wolfe, M.D., President, American Psychoanalytic Association; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCSF

Steven D. Axelrod, Ph.D., is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and a Senior Editor of Division/Review, a quarterly published by the APA’s Division of Psychoanalysis (Division 39). He is also a Principal of the Boswell Group, a psychodynamic management consulting group, and he maintains practices in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and organizational consulting in New York City.

Ronald C. Naso, Ph.D., ABPP., is a Board-Certified Psychoanalyst and Clinical Psychologist in independent practice in Stamford, CT. He is currently President of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis. His book Hypocrisy Unmasked was published in 2010. In 2016, two additional books, Humanizing Evil and Ethics of Evil, co-edited with Jon Mills, were also published.

Larry M. Rosenberg, Ph.D., is the President of the Child and Adolescent Section of Division 39 of the APA and is a member of the board of the Section for Applied Clinical Psychoanalysis of the Division. He is a Co-Editor of the Child Section of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual-2 and currently practices in Stamford, CT.

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