The question of whether Freud and the discipline of psychoanalysis he founded are dead has been asked repeatedly since the 1970s, when many academic psychology departments turned against psychoanalysis for not being scientific enough, and insurance companies decided to favor limited cognitive/behavioral or pharmaceutical treatments over long-term analyses. Time magazine had a famous cover in 1993 asking “Is Freud Dead?” and 13 years later a Newsweek cover proclaimed Freud was not dead, at least not quite yet.
Whether psychoanalysis/Freud is alive or dead is once again pertinent, for the country finds itself in what many have called “a mental health crisis.” We see disturbing mental heath problems in our mass shootings, homelessness, domestic violence and countless other social practices that are becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Students at our most prestigious colleges and universities are far more likely to be taking some kind of psychotropic drug than they were a mere decade ago.
The question of whether psychoanalysis has something important to say about restoring and sustaining mental health is therefore vital. However, insofar as psychoanalysis is seen by many as discredited, its discerning understanding of psychological dynamics, psychological needs, and methods for restoring mental health will not be accessed by the wider culture. Hence, any study that helps restore legitimacy to psychoanalysis might play an important role in helping our culture deal with its debilitating mental health crisis. Although recent studies showing psychoanalytic treatment is as effective as CBT or psychopharmacology are significant, the perception of a delegitimation coming from academia remains a problem.
We decided to test the preconception that academia had banished psychoanalysis to the same realm as phrenology or astrology by seeing how much it is taught in the undergraduate curricula of top-ranking colleges and universities. It is these institutions that are the most important arbitrators of what constitutes knowledge and what deserves to be taught and known. We thought if we could find a robust presence of psychoanalysis in undergraduate curricula, it would constitute strong evidence psychoanalysis is alive as a vital field of inquiry; if it was being ignored, it would constitute a sign of deadness.
We used the US News & World Report’s 2017 lists of top 50 national universities, liberal arts colleges and ‘best value’ institutions—a set of 118 institutions (since a number of ‘best value’ institutions appear in the other two lists). We scoured course catalogs and departmental websites to compile a list of courses, professors and departments in which psychoanalytic material is most likely to be taught, by using the search words “psychoanalysis,” “psychoanalytic,” “psycho dynamic,” “Freud,” “Lacan,” “psychiatry” and “unconscious.” This method produces only probable results and undoubtedly misses a number of courses that deal in part with psychoanalysis, and probably includes some in which it was so subsidiary as to be misleading. Our research also did not aim to discover whether psychoanalysis is being advocated or disparaged within these classes, but assumed if the discipline is being incorporated into class material, it is being deemed important—and this is a sign the theory has life. There was no actual communication with the professors teaching the courses—we simply went to websites using search words.
The results of our research are rather astounding, especially for those who have held that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience, like phrenology, and unworthy to be taught. We doubt there are any courses that teach phrenology, but found 835 courses in which psychoanalysis is being taught. Psychology and philosophy departments came out neck and neck (125 courses vs. 124 courses) for the main departments in which psychoanalysis is being taught. Rounding out the top 5 were English (119 courses), German (102), and comparative literature (89). Psychoanalysis was also frequently found in anthropology (47), film and media studies (30), and sociology (23).
Within the category of top 50 national universities, 80 percent had at least 1 course related to psychoanalysis, 58 percent had at least 5 courses, and 24 percent had at least 10 courses. Within the category of top 50 liberal arts colleges, 94 percent had at least 1 psychoanalysis-related course, 66 percent had at least 5 courses, and 22 percent had at least 10 courses. Within the category of top 50 ‘best value’ institutions, of which 18 non-cross-listed institutions were examined, 67 percent had at least 1 course related to psychoanalysis, while 33 percent had at least 5 courses and 11 percent had at least 10 courses.
In short, a quarter of the premier universities and liberal arts colleges in the country have enough courses to be able to form a formal program or minor for the study of psychoanalysis. To the best of our present knowledge, only three of these institutions do have formal minors: Colorado College, Boston College and the University of Pennsylvania. (It should be noted that some prestigious institutions not on the lists, such as Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire College and Emerson, also have formal programs or area studies in psychoanalysis. There might be others that are unknown to us.)
If we look more closely at the flagship institutions that have the highest ranking on the lists, we find further validation for psychoanalysis. At Princeton (#1) there are 52 courses that had material from psychoanalysis in them from 12 different fields, including 4 in which it is the primary content. At Harvard (#2), 15 courses bring psychoanalysis into play, and at Stanford (#6) there are 18 such courses from 7 different fields. Johns Hopkins (#10) has 45 courses in which psychoanalysis appears, and Boston College (#31) has 29, including 11 in which it is the primary content. However, the University of Chicago (#3), Yale (#4) and Columbia (#5) have fewer than 10 courses with psychoanalytic content. Further, we could find no courses that dealt with psychoanalysis in 9 of the universities.
For liberal arts colleges, Williams (#1) has 21 courses from 4 different fields, with 3 of the courses being primarily about psychoanalysis. Amherst (#2) has 16 from 6 fields. Scripps College actually has a course entitled Is Freud Really Dead? Perhaps the leader in psychoanalysis for liberal arts colleges is our own Colorado College (#23), which has 33 courses involving psychoanalytic material, including 9 in which it is the primary focus and a formal minor. Colorado College is unique in offering an undergraduate course, Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice, at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis (Colorado College offers the course but uses the facilities and analysts at the Chicago Institute) in which students get to interact with 10-15 practicing analysts. Colorado College also has a highly attended lecture series in psychoanalysis, along with a monthly salon in which professors and students come together at a faculty home to discuss psychoanalysis. Only 3 of the 50 liberal arts colleges did not appear to offer any courses dealing with psychoanalysis.
That’s the data; but what does it mean? What stands out most is the lack of uniformity. While some top schools such as Princeton, Williams and Hopkins have numerous courses dealing with a psychoanalytic perspective, nine of the top 50 universities have none. We can conclude from this incredible variation in psychoanalysis’ importance that it is neither part of a canon that must be taught nor is it canonically censured as nonsense, as some commentators have claimed it should be. Whether or not it is being taught probably depends to a high degree on particular professors and particular departmental orientations. We also conclude that such variation across multiple disciplines and area studies serves as a key signifier that psychoanalysis retains a sense of meaningfulness and applicability to the human condition.
It is also somewhat significant to find psychoanalysis being taught in psychology departments—even if only minimally, given their general hostility towards psychoanalysis over the past half century. However, it is clear the vast majority of courses dealing with psychoanalysis occur in the humanities and social sciences, where many departments and programs find its understanding of the human psyche to be important, perhaps especially in light of the scientism that seems to reign in many psychology departments. The price psychology departments have paid for becoming scientific is that they deal only with objectified features of psychological life and thereby forfeit exploring subjectivity as a realm of lived experience and the production of meanings. Insofar as psychoanalysis is a profound exploration of inner experience, it migrated mainly to the humanities, with some outposts in sociology and anthropology.
Given that most of what is taught in any field or department is canonically prescribed, it is truly remarkable so many professors and departments think it valuable to include psychoanalysis in their curricula. It is being taught because many individual professors at our best institutions find it either historically important or conceptually compelling. Nothing speaks more to the life of a theory than the fact it so claims the hearts and minds of individual professors that they are courageously willing to teach it without canonical legitimation and often in the face of hostility.
We hope our research allows professors at all institutions to gain legitimation for courses or programs in psychoanalysis. Within academia, nothing legitimates curricular innovation more than showing that others, especially others at esteemed institutions, are doing what one proposes to do. Our conclusion is psychoanalysis is alive and well at the level of undergraduate institutions, and these institutions grant a deep legitimation to a wider cultural acceptance of this still remarkable, and still developing theory of understanding who we are as humans and why we do what we do.