Does psychoanalysis have a future?
Psychoanalysis is not a relic of a bygone era, argues Jeffrey B. Rubin in
A Psychoanalysis for Our Time
. Rather, it has profound relevance for our troubled time.
Steering a balanced course between Freud's virulent attackers and his loyalist defenders, Rubin discerns both blind spots and hidden strengths in psychoanalysis. He reveals its covert authoritarianism, Byzantine politics, censorship of dissident thinkers, residual sexism, and overly simplistic accounts of self.
does not only cogently critique psychoanalysis, however; it also offers a visionary approach for its renewal, based on cultivating greater historical, theoretical, and methodological self-awareness within psychoanalysis.
Drawing on history, deconstructionism, feminism, anthropology, and Eastern meditative disciplines, Rubin portrays a psychoanalysis that is self-reflective and non-authoritarian, pluralistic and emancipatory. Encyclopedic in scope, integrative in spirit,
is a brilliant and landmark work.