Histories of Psychoanalysis

Histories of Psychoanalysis is committed to facilitating the exploration of the variegated history of psychoanalysis especially (though by no means exclusively) within the English-speaking world. Histories of Psychoanalysis is also a growing repository of resources: from listings of archives, through short biographies of both known and now largely forgotten figures in psychoanalytic history and its pre-histories (including, in some cases, the digitised archiving of primary source materials). This site also includes bibliographies, writings, and a blog, and will offer those new to the area as well as more established participants a developing patchwork to assist further studies.

Psychoanalysis is here understood as a particular tripartite body of knowledge of the mind, a disciplinary and interdisciplinary research activity, and a method for treating psychological problems filtered through the work of Freud and others (note). Here we include figures and movements within the pre-history of psychoanalysis (such as Charcot, Bernheim and The Society for Psychical Research) as well as those Martin Bergmann might term dissidents of one form or another (such as Jung, Adler, Rank, Ferenczi, Horney, Klein, Fairbairn, etc) (note). The history of psychoanalysis, like psychoanalysis itself, has been a controversial and contested area. From Freud's Die Traumdeutung (note) to his 1914 paper 'On the history of the psychoanalytic movement' (note), through the anonymous 1920 'History of the British Psycho-Analytical Society' (note), to Ernest Jones's 'authorised' biography of Freud (note), early contributions to the field were often partial, politicised, and tending towards the hagiographical.