ABSTRACT
The future strength of psychoanalysis will be determined less by what is newly discovered in the psychoanalytic consulting room than by how psychoanalysis engages with the culture at large. For more than a century, individual psychoanalyses have led to the liberation of numberless individuals. The enrichment of the world through each personal analytic benefit, plus its spreading cumulative benefits through impact on others, is incalculable. Since Freud’s time, the energies of the psychoanalytic movement have become constituted mainly around clinical analysis. Where psychoanalysis has unfolded most broadly throughout the culture, where analytic voices are most integrated into discussions of art, literature, politics, history and so forth – in those places individuals seem most readily open to accepting appropriate recommendations for analytic therapy. The conclusion appears self-evident: psychoanalysis thrives best when it moves beyond guild-like preoccupations and focuses more of its energy on substantial engagement with the broader world in all its myriad aspects.
