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Where have all the hysterics gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the neurasthenics gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the traumatic neuroses gone?
Gone to consulting rooms everywhere.
When will they ever learn?
When will they get insight?
It was not so very long ago that Erich Fromm warned us that psychoanalysis was in a state of crisis—one of conformity. “Psychoanalysis was originally a radical, penetrating, liberating theory [which has] retreated into conformism and respectibility.” Put bluntly, psychoanalysis has become institutionalized and bureaucratized, both coopted and coopting. Thus, Fromm pointed out what should be common knowledge: “the vast majority of analysts within the organization tended to see only what they expected, and were expected to find.”1 Breaking stride with this theoretical repetition-compulsion, Levenson asks us to reflect on the extent to which “psychoanalysts have tended to treat themselves as a constant and to muse perplexedly about the changing psychoanalytic patient.”2 (p. 93) Periodically, convention papers ask “Where have all the hysterics gone?” To defend against change, different tacks are tried: (1) “Old-Fogeyism,” or “If the concepts were good enough for your training analyst, then they're good enough for you.” (2) As a group the disciples become more orthodox than the master. Thus, the “Psychoanalytic Paladin” is born. (3) The disciples are often overheard saying something like “New Tide” (e.g. parataxic distortion) is really just Old Tide (transference) with a new label on it.”
Levenson opens The Fallacy of Understanding by suggesting that even nostalgia is not what it used to be; we have changed and so has Memory Lane. No longer can