Join us for this timely reappraisal of Janet Malcolm’s 1981 “witty and wicked” text, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession. Travis Alexander, a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University, will lead us through a history of the decline of psychoanalysis in the US and the UK. If the practice was already receding in 1981, it has only become more sidelined since the rise of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Jumping off from Malcolm’s analysis of the profession in the early 1980s, this presentation proposes to offer an account of the forces that facilitated CBT’s rise — in particular, the dominance of private insurance — and an examination of how psychoanalysis ultimately conflicted with American attachments to and ideas of self-improvement. Finally, explore paths towards the reintegration of certain psychoanalytic practices into both therapy and US life more generally.
JUNGIAN.DIRECTORY