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The author of this book holds a doctoral degree in American studies and serves business firms as a consultant in the field of cultural trends. He has published books on American culture, on 20th-century TV advertising, on the New York World's Fair of 1964-1965, on American wealth, on the American dream, and on other topics, including Freud on Madison Avenue: Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in America . In Shrink, he has written a chronological account of what a general, well-read American might have run across in magazines and newspapers, especially The New York Times, concerning Freud and psychoanalysis from the 1920s to the 21st century.
This book has two problems. First, it appears to have been written in haste, with too many errors and without systematically integrating previous scholarly literature, even though the author at the beginning carefully calls attention to major secondary sources. Second, the author appears to have no more than a general or lay or journalistic understanding of psychoanalytic history, teachings, and procedures. He lumps shock therapies and drug therapies together. He thinks conservatism explains the rise of psychoanalytic “orthodoxy” in the mid-20th century, and does not mention ego psychology by name.
Indeed, one can go on listing errors and misperceptions in this book, many reproduced from writings of journalists of the past. Yet it behooves one to see that Shrink may nevertheless have substantial value as one takes into account what Samuel has accomplished. In his introduction, he disavows writing “another analytical, systematic treatise” (p. x). He instead presents a running account of what a relatively naïve reader could have read in ordinary popular, but respectable, U.S. publications. Moreover, Samuel intends his book to be read as a narrative of the ups and downs, claims and criticism, of Freud and his teachings over almost a century as both psychoanalysis and American culture changed. In fact, the author has a ke