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Many observers today believe that American psychoanalysis is in crisis, and that the future of the profession is hanging in the balance.1 Recent debates in both the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) and the American Psychological Association (APA) testify to the character and intensity of that crisis, and if J. Oliver Conroy's June 2023 account in The Guardian, “Inside the war tearing psychoanalysis apart,” is any indication, awareness of that crisis is now reaching mainstream media. Conroy does not fully grasp the issues at stake, but acknowledges that some observers believe that psychoanalysis will survive as a therapeutic practice, even if the APsA may not survive as a viable organization. Others, however, believe the talking cure itself is in danger, that it is being irreparably politicized. In the APsA, an acrimonious debate in the Association's Board meetings and on its listserve over the leadership's decision to remove a George Washington University psychologist from the APsA's June 2023 annual meeting led to the April 2023 resignation of its President, Kerry Sulkowicz. We will return to that matter below, after putting these developments in a broader historical context.
There are several dimensions to the current crisis; more, indeed, than we can do justice to here. Nevertheless, there are several issues that cannot be ignored. To begin with, let's recall that from its inception, psychoanalysis sought to increase the individual's self-knowledge and capacity for rational choice, operating on the assumption that these would help free the patient from morbid fears, inhibitions. obsessions and compulsions, from baffling psychogenic symptoms and from character traits rooted in arrested development. Insights from the analytic work were then applied to ameliorating persistent problems in the patient's interpersonal relationships. Let's call this the traditional model.
By contrast with the traditional model, Critical Social Justice Theory (CSJT) is a much mor