Does Psychoanalysis have a Future in American Psychology

The question posed in the title of this paper cannot be answered without first investigating some of its implications. If we are interested in the future of psychoanalysis in American psychology, then what about its past and its present? If the question implies uncertainty or doubt about the future of psychoanalysis, then what are their sources? Since we are not concerned here with psychoanalysis in the narrow sense of a professional practice, what are its essential ingredients whose relationship to American psychology we wish to explore? I shall try to examine each of these issues briefly. Some of them have been discussed in much more detail by Eissler (1965) who makes many points relevant to the present topic.

The manner in which psychoanalysis has influenced American psychology in the past has been reviewed to some extent in the monograph by Shakow and Rapaport (1964). Between the World Wars, the psychoanalytic theory of personality found its way gradually into the psychological textbooks. It was usually described as one of various personality theories and was followed by a critique focusing on the lack of scientific, especially experimental, verification of its propositions and on the redundancy and the anthropomorphic quality of its concepts. Academic psychology in general absorbed little of the psychoanalytic orientation although some concepts, such as those of Jung's notions of introversion and extroversion, were