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There is no question that bringing the social, political, historical dimensions into psychoanalytic theory and practice is, and should be, the new frontier of our field. Not that there is not a long history of attempts to do so. Sullivan, Fromm, Cushman, Erikson, and others have been arguing for a better integration of psychoanalysis and socio-political history for decades. However, with the rapidly increasing awareness of, and emphasis on, racism and economic inequities in America, the topic has acquired a new level of respectability. And if there was ever a marker for this shift, then the publication of Layton's Toward a Social Psychoanalysis in 2020 is a prominent one. I am deeply sympathetic toward this increasing acceptance of the sociopolitical dimension in psychoanalysis. Due to that orientation, I am also deeply concerned with getting it right. As such, I am glad to have the opportunity to write this review. At the outset, it is important to keep in mind that this is not actually a book but a collection of papers. Think of it as a walk through a retrospective in a museum. You can go from room to room in sequence to try and get a sense of the evolution of the author's ideas, or you can wander into various rooms out of order and examine each one's representation of a particular time and place. In reviewing this exhibit, however, I am not going to do either. Instead, my intention is to delve deeply into the nature of the contribution that this volume is promising to make, and to try and clarify what it does and does not get right about the possibility of integrating the sociopolitical with psychoanalytic theory and practice.
This is a large exhibition with 16 chapters divided into three sections. The first is titled “What Is Social Psychoanalysis” and provides background to Layton's interest, influences, and ideas. It consists of her writings during the time period from 2004 to 2013. One begins to see that the Frankfurt School (based in the Institute of Social R