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The present psychoanalytic era seems to feature an unprecedented level of anxiety among analysts concerning the future. In particular, psychoanalytic practice seems to be in jeopardy. Practice numbers continue their downward tilt in many locales. A national leader suggests that the American Psychoanalytic Association is “in decline.” To paraphrase Marvell, at his back the psychoanalyst always hears the “evidenced-based” chariot hurrying near. Psychoanalysts face “marginalization,” or have already been marginalized.
Paul Stepansky's Psychoanalysis at the Margins is an exploration of the causes of this marginalization, and a consideration of the prospects of American psychoanalysis, both its theory and its practice. Stepansky offers the personal experiences of a psychoanalytic publisher, as well as a full-scale synthesis and critique of the loss of authority of psychoanalysis within American psychiatry and as a treatment in the public eye. Taken together, Stepansky's background as historian of ideas, his intimate knowledge of the publishing process, and his own considerable published scholarship not only on Freud, Adler, and others, but also his remarkable grasp of the history of modern medicine—all give his perspective on the field a unique authority in considering the trajectory of psychoanalytic practice in the U.S.
Psychoanalysis at the Margins opens as a memoir of Stepansky's efforts to keep the Analytic Press going. His reader hears firsthand an account of a venture that began with great promise and ended with frustration as press runs for new books progressively dwindled. Stepansky contextualizes the history of this press within the much longer history of psychoanalytic publishing and its influence in the U.S., in the process providing remarkable documentation of total book sales, which suggest the extent of the influence of psychoanalytic ideas among the general public. This influence began in the 1930s but reached its height in the sixties and seventies. Memora