To the Editor

This letter serves as a brief rejoinder to the Board of Section IX (Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility) response (Board of Section IX, Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility, 2010) to my recent letter to the editor of Psychologist-Psychoanalyst (Thomas, 2010).

Regrettably, in their statement, the Board of Section IX created a plethora of “straw man” issues regarding my positions, and then presented copious information in support of the philosophical and historical bases for the existence and purposes of Section IX. Specifically, unlike me, they failed to distinguish between analyzing social and political issues and proselytizing about them, a distinction which the Board has apparently also chosen to ignore in its so-called political work (Board of Section IX, Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility, 2010, p. 8). Although they presented a scholarly justification for applied psychoanalysis, they used this information to discredit positions that were never taken by me in the first place. For example, I certainly have no objections to the application of psychoanalytic theory to a wide variety of academic disciplines and social issues. In fact, it is probably the aspect of Freud's work that I most enjoyed reading when I was formally studying psychoanalysis. Moreover, my own publications include a rather lengthy armchair psychoanalysis of Alexander the Great (Thomas, 1995) and several other articles on the application of psychoanalytic theory to professional and clinical issues in counseling and rehabilitation (Cubbage and Thomas, 1989; Huebner and Thomas, 1995; Thomas, 1991, 1997; Thomas and Garske, 1995; Thomas and Kaplan, 1994; Thomas and McGinnis, 1991).

I do, however, object to psychoanalysts purporting to be scientifically objective and then labeling those who disagree with them politically as being ill informed, unethical, or pathological in some way (e.g., see Crouse and Stalker, 2007). Also, I am concerned that Section IX is being used to advance what are