For the past five years, I, along with Lisa Damour, a candidate at the Hanna Perkins Center in Cleveland, have been immersed in writing an undergraduate abnormal psychology textbook, which has just been published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Along the way, Damour and I have learned some striking lessons about the place of psychoanalytic thinking in undergraduate education. Meaningful psychoanalytic content in psychology departments has nearly disappeared. In view of this, offering a positive image of psychoanalysis to the millions of undergraduates who take psychology courses every year may be a crucial part of efforts to re-establish psychoanalysis to a more respected position in the intellectual and mental health communities in the U.S.
Meaningful psychoanalytic content in psychology departments has nearly disappeared. In view of this, offering a positive image of psychoanalysis to the millions of undergraduates who take psychology courses every year may be a crucial part of efforts to re-establish psychoanalysis to a more respected position in the intellectual and mental health communities in the U.S.
I began teaching undergraduates at the University of Michigan in 1988. When I started looking for a textbook for my abnormal psychology course, I was appalled. The coverage of psychoanalytic theory and practice in the leading textbooks at the time was at best inadequate and at worst explicitly disparaging. Many of these are written by either non-practicing academic clinical psychologists or by non-clinical psychologists, certainly not by analysts. In my own classes, it was relatively easy to include rich psychoanalytic and clinical content through articles in a photocopied course pack I compiled, but I shuddered to think that undergraduates were routinely being taught that psychoanalysis was a historical curiosity, even an abomination! As a result, I began thinking about the possibility of writing an alternative, psychoanalysis-friendly textbook.
My first approach was very discouraging. Talking to editors at major publishers about my idea in the early 1990s, I was told in no uncertain terms that there was no market for a psychoanalytic undergraduate textbook. In fact, the editors explained that they were used to hearing complaints from psychology faculty about psychoanalytic content in textbooks, and, understandably, the editors were almost phobic that anything psychoanalytic was the kiss of death in the marketplace.
It took another two years before I finally hit on a workable idea. Rather than a book that was explicitly psychoanalytic, I began envisioning a textbook that would focus on the fascinating issues and controversies in the field of abnormal psychology that my students found so interesting—issues like the continuum between normal and abnormal behavior and the connection between mind and body. I thought that such a focus might provide an alternative to the DSM/medical-model emphasis of the existing texts. Further, this kind of book, in which psychodynamic content would be respectfully included, could provide an approach to the field consistent with psychoanalytic thinking.
By this point, I had brought Damour on board. We pitched our idea, concretized in a prospectus for a book called Abnormal Psychology: The Enduring Issues, to several publishers. To our delight, this formula worked. Not only did the concept appeal to editors, but the faculty reviewers of the prospectus, commissioned by the publishers, were highly enthusiastic. We received many comments from faculty around the country along the lines of “it's about time somebody brought back what's interesting in this field and deemphasized the DSM-IV.” Several publishing houses were so taken with the reviews that we enjoyed a mini-bidding war before choosing John Wiley & Sons. We were thrilled with the confirmation that there was, indeed, a hunger for something different. Little did we know what lay ahead….
Having signed a contract, we began the grueling writing process in January 2000. Each time we finished a group of chapters, Wiley would send them out for review by psychology faculty who teach abnormal psychology. This was an eye-opening experience. While we had received a favorable response to our overall vision for the book from reviewers, now they were reviewing chapters that included specific psychoanalytic content.
A significant number of reviewers were entirely hostile to any such content, dismissing it as totally inappropriate for inclusion in a contemporary book. A larger group of reviewers seemed to appreciate our clinical content until we used specifically psychoanalytic terms, at which point they balked. This reaction was familiar from our teaching. Both Damour and I had repeatedly heard from students: “You can't be Freudian or psychoanalytic; your lectures are interesting, and Professor X told us that psychoanalysis is nonsense!”
Among the vast majority of academic clinical psychologists today—those who are shaping the interests and attitudes of the next generation—psychoanalytic ideas are either openly derided, or given new names within other theoretical perspectives without proper credit.
What we began to realize after several rounds of such reviews was sobering, if not surprising. Among the vast majority of academic clinical psychologists today—those who are shaping the interests and attitudes of the next generation—psychoanalytic ideas are either openly derided, or given new names within other theoretical perspectives without proper credit.
We adopted a twofold approach to this problem. First, in keeping with our original plan, we organized the book around six “core concepts” in abnormal psychology that highlight the controversies in the field instead of a medical model/DSM-IV emphasis. Secondly, we chose a “components” approach to the theoretical diversity in clinical psychology. In other words, we present the major theoretical models in the field (psychoanalytic, behavioral, cognitive, and others) as different lenses through which to view psychopathology, lenses that can complement each other and often overlap. This approach allowed us to talk about the ways in which newer theories and clinical approaches (such as cognitive behavioral therapy) have their own terms for describing the same phenomena that have been conceptualized previously within other theories, including psychoanalytic theory. We could also then describe prominently and in detail the psychoanalytic perspective on psychopathology and treatment, showing what it uniquely contributes, where it overlaps with other approaches, and how it can complement other perspectives.
This approach seemed to solve our problem with reviewers, and I am pleased to report that sales of the book are off to an encouraging start with over 50 schools adopting the book in the first six months since publication. What is most gratifying to us is that many of the positive reviews and early adoptions have come from professors who have in the past been unfriendly to psychoanalysis and used cognitive-behaviorally oriented textbooks. We hope that the book can serve as a partial antidote to the Freud bashing that has become all too common in undergraduate psychology courses, and can encourage greater respect for and interest in psychoanalysis in the next generation of students.
An expanded version of this article was originally published in Psychologist-Psychoanalyst, the newsletter of the Division of Psychoanalysis (Division 39), American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., and is reprinted here with permission of the division.