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At the Budapest congress of 1918, Freud (1918) lamented the inability of psychoanalysis to meet the needs of the poor and disenfranchised, who had been neglected by this emerging discipline. He foresaw, however, a future in which “the conscience of society will awake” and take upon itself the responsibility of providing for their psychological as well as material well-being. In a rather productive period spanning 1918-1938, the first generation of analysts responded to Freud's words “half as prophecy and half as challenge” (Max Eitington, cited in Danto, 2005, p. 3) by opening a series of free clinics providing psychosocial relief for the poor, and participating in various progressive movements seeking social change in post-World War I Europe (Danto, 2005). Neil Altman, alongside others working at the clinical and theoretical intersections of race, class, politics, and social justice, reminds us of this history and invites us to remember, repeat, and work through our sociohistorical legacy. With this second edition of The Analyst in the Inner City, Altman shares with us the maturing of his clinical, critical, and political thought since the book first appeared in 1995.
The chapters in Parts I (“Background”) and II (“Race, Class, and Culture”) are probably the most familiar to readers of the earlier edition. One can tell, on close inspection, however, that Altman has revised these chapters in great detail, providing new clinical and theoretical material, extending his insights to the complexities of psychodynamic work with impoverished, immigrant, and minority communities (Chs. 1-3). A welcome change is Altman's more conciliatory attitude toward ego psychology. He notes the strengths of relational psychoanalysis while acknowledging that other schools are perfectly capable of adapting theory and practice to meet the exigencies of work with underprivileged populations (Ch. 2).
In Part II Altman heeds Watkins and Shulman's call for psychoanalytic engagement with antiracis