Secrets of the Soul: The Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis

The more than a century-long history of psychoanalysis is full of unexpected and dramatic turns. Recognized as an inspiring language of human emancipation, it played a central role in the emergence of modernism in the 1920s, shaping the British and American versions of the "welfare state" in the 1940s-1950s, the rise of rebellious radicalism in the 1960s, the movements for gender rights and sexual identities in the 1970s. However, at the same time, psychoanalysis became a stronghold of xenophobic prejudices, blocking political participation, at some point degenerated into a profession and even turned into a "pseudoscience." Eli Zaretsky's book is an attempt to explore the paradoxes of the social and cultural history of psychoanalysis. The author seeks to reveal and reaffirm the liberating dimension of psychoanalytic thought, without denying the validity of a critical view of it and the need to rethink its legacy. Eli Zaretsky is a professor of history at the New School for Social Research (New York), specializing in the cultural history of the 20th century.