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In the 50's, Talcott Parsons constituted the lone sociological voice addressed to the possibilities of integration between sociology and psychoanalysis. Parson's influence and interest in psychoanalysis and sociology have been dormant for some 20 years. Recent efforts within academic sociology indicate a nascence of concern with and interest in psychoanalytic theory, practice, and the politics of psychoanalysis and their training institutes, both in the United States and in other countries. With two major works by sociologist Gerald Platt (a student of Parsons), The Wish to Be Free and Psychoanalytic Sociology, and a major effort by Sherry Turkle, Psychoanalytic Politics, delineating the impact of Freudian thought via Lacan upon French society and French culture, the breach between the disciplines seems to be diminishing. Panels at the 1979 meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association in Anaheim, California and the Society for the Study of Social Problems in Boston, Massachusetts, and articles emanating from sociological scholars such as Peter Berger, Charles Camic, Robert Endelman, Don Levine and Neil Smelser would seem to indicate that academic sociology, if not academia itself (history and anthropology), is preparing once again to endorse some aspects of psychoanalysis. Although I hesitate to call this a movement as yet, Jacoby's work, Social Amnesia, also stands as a contribution to the reintroduction of the unconscious to academic psychology and cultural thought.
The book by Nancy Chodorow, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, The Reproduction of Mothering (subtitled Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender,), achieves a standard of excellence that could well serve as a benchmark for American sociologists who have for so long found psychoanalysis alien to their pursuits but who may now want to understand what might be useful about the unconscious or an indepth psychology as they pursue their own research interests and try to develop