ABSTRACT
For much of this book I have been very critical of some psychoanalytic ideas and some developments in psychoanalysis; now I want to switch direction-there is much in psychoanalysis, not just as a general psychology or a method of treatment, but as a way of approaching the world and the task of living, that is useful. As a treatment and as a theory, psychoanalysis embodies a number of values which I think need defending-against critics not only from the new therapies and from outside psychoanalysis but also from itself, from its own desire to be popular and its tendency to get caught up in the social processes of late modernity precisely because it is unaware of them. What I will do in this chapter is suggest that many of the central accusations that are laid against psychoanalysis actually point to its most important contributions: its ability to identify and understand a reality of the self under the illusions of late modernity.
