Psychoanalysis: The Second Wave

The initial wave of popular interest in psychoanalysis arrived during the years just after the first World War. From the therapeutic side, it may have been given impetus by the psychic disorders that the war brought. Its vogue among “intellectuals” (who were devoting a good deal of their time to scuttling the intellect) was due in part to the support it appeared to give to the prevalent anti-rationalist movements. But the popular craze for what were supposed to be the doctrines of Freud sprang from their seeming kinship with the revolt against “Puritanism” led by Mr. Mencken and lesser prophets. The tendency of boys and girls to have their fun grimly in the name of Freud was given a setback when Miss Anita Loos in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes made the great Viennese after analyzing Lorelei express his amazment at her complete lack of repressions and advise her to go cultivate some.

A saner and quieter interest in Freud continued to work and recently has gained momentum, in the attempts to apply and test his insights in the fields discussed by the symposium in the present issue, and in others such as anthropology, history of religions and social science. It has now become evident that Freud created not only—in the words of a poem by W. H. Auden recently printed in these pages—”a whole climate of opinion,” but a major revolution in man’s knowledge of himself. Like a true explorer, Freud was more concerned with opening an unknown country to adventure than with charting it in detail or blueprinting it for future settlement. The work of many generations will have to be done before his principles can be evaluated definitively. From time to time, however, inventories of such a movement must be made, and it is by this need, as well as by the second wave of lay interest in psychoanalysis resulting from Freud’s death, that our symposium is prompted.