There is a widespread perception that psychoanalysis, at least in America, is in serious crisis. The declared dimensions are multiple: As a psychology purporting to explain how the mind hangs together, it is in retreat from its most overarching claims, and it is beset by alternative psychological explanatory visions, most notably the behavioristic and the humanistic or phenomenological-existential. As a therapy for the mentally and emotionally disordered, its results are more modest than a once ebullient overoptimism had it, and it is competing with a myriad other claimants, serious therapies derived from the competing psychological paradigms, fringe therapies ranging all the way to the cultist and exploitative, and varieties of self-help efforts