ABSTRACT
The achievements of the classical analysts contributed to fields as psychosomatics and literature, but the impact of la psychanalyse on the Parisian public was due to Jacques Lacan. In fact, his philosophical ideas were aimed at large audiences while he denounced the establishment Freudians. Still, even if the members of the many small post-Lacanian factions should manage to survive by sending each other patients, it appeared doubtful that they would be able to institute a responsible means of training young analysts. All French Freudians were rereading Sigmund Freud, adding new wrinkles to the texts or reinventing him altogether. In general, much of what applies to American Freudians can be said to hold true for their London colleagues, but writ small. The German analysts who expected psychoanalysis to rid them of the Nazi past championed Alexander Mitscherlich's social progressivism, although some of them gradually limited themselves to seeing patients, leaving politics to the politicians.
