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19 years ago, a book called “Psychoanalysts without a Couch” was published in Paris. It was a text about psychiatry in the 13th arrondissement, where some psychoanalysts had settled, having left their analytic offices in order to create model clinics in psychiatry for adults and children.
Now, a Swedish version edited by Clarence Crafoord has been published. It is called: “Psykoanalytiker utan soffa”. It contains contributions by no less than 18 psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-oriented scientists, who work in areas outside psychoanalysis proper.
What does “without a couch” mean? Probably that the couch is internalized, and that the psychoanalyst applies the psychoanalytic method and its attitudes to situations, where something other than a person is lying on the couch: the method is applied to psychiatry, psychosomatics, group processes, etc. But as we see from many of the chapters, the situation is immensely complicated because the new “analysands” have not lain down volontarily on the imaginary couch.
First I want to declare my sympathetic view towards this book and to the work constituting its basis. Psychiatry in Sweden has for a long time used psychoanalysis and profited from it without acknowledging its contributions in any other way than by kicking its shin.
But before I look at the various individual chapters I want to mention some complicating thoughts that come to mind as I study the book as a whole. I really cannot find any reflexions on what it might mean to the