Some Present Day Psychoanalytic Currents on the European Continent

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the evolution of certain current psychoanalytic trends* in their passage from the European continent† to the United States and back again to their original European setting. I will briefly focus on local representations of psychoanalysis in some parts of Europe today, exploring the horizon of the appropriate applicability of psychoanalysis as well as its socio-political impact.

It is my thesis that psychoanalysis is not merely a particular form of psychotherapy; it is at all times also a philosophy of life. Spurred by a humanistic concern about mental suffering, curiosity arose about the workings of the human mind and the causes of socially deviant behavior. It led to the emergence of a field that turned into a hybrid between philosophy, theology, psychology, and medicine. As philosophy and theology, psychoanalysis rest on speculative assumptions about the basic nature of man that so far have not led to reliable documentation. As psychology, the field is caught between humanistic, behavioristic, and mystical considerations. As part of medicine, it has fallen heir to a mixture of biologic