A review of The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis: edited by Lynn Chancer and John Andrews. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 427 pp.

A review of The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis, edited by Lynn Chancer and John Andrews. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 427 pp.

This is a fascinating and useful book, and I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to review it. It bridges a disciplinary gap from which we all suffer. Though interpersonalists and relationalists may be familiar with the idea that our personal problems and psychological difficulties occur in a social context, more so than many classical drive theorists, we often do not have an adequate grasp of what those contexts are or how they actually shape the behaviors we observe in our consulting rooms. That has often made us naïve.

Moreover, as we try to extend psychoanalytic thinking beyond individual patients, to engage with politics, economics, and history, we need the knowledge and perspective sociology offers. Without that, our speculations remain too often influenced by the latest books we have read or the issues currently hyped by the media.

At the same time, sociologists often suffer from a superficial grasp of human motivation, failing to note adequately the ambivalences and conflicts that underlie our social behaviors. Many sociologists, like economists, for example, have been captivated by the theory that we

make rational choices based on our interests. The thesis of the editors of this book is that the inherent problems of forging links between disciplines has been amplified by a “divorce” sociology imposed on its efforts to bring psychoanalytic insights into their thinking because of a prejudice against its “soft” and unverified claims. As sociology became more and more positivistic and statistical, psychoanalysis came to seem even softer, more speculative, and with the attacks on Freud, less credible. As the editors of this book demonstrate, an interest in psychoanalysis increasingly was not seen as a way to advance careers.

Nonetheless, there have been a number of sociologists over the years who have st