Paul E. Stepansky, Ph.D.

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Psychoanalysis at the Margins

• Other Press, released November 10, 2009
• ISBN-13: 978-1-59051-340-8
• Hardcover 384 pages · $39.00
• Order from Other Press
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Why has American psychoanalysis been so thoroughly marginalized in the world of American mental health care? And what does its retreat to the margins tell us about the field, its practitioners, and our culture of healing? In this masterful summing up of three decades of experience as a psychoanalytic editor and publisher, Paul Stepansky offers a historical examination of how psychoanalysis has all but lost its publishing arm and now struggles to survive in a postanalytic world of cognitive-behavioral interventions, brief therapy, psychopharmacology, and managed care.

Psychoanalysis at the Margins tells the story of a once cohesive discipline that has splintered into rivalrous part-fields, each speaking its own language, forming its own institutions, and promulgating its own distinctive version of the psychoanalytic enterprise. Simultaneously, it is a cautionary tale of the inevitable marginalization of any profession that resists integration into the scientific mainstream and, in the process, denigrates the methods and procedures of normal science and the idea of progress enshrined in them.

Beyond its self-evident importance to psychoanalysts and other proponents of “talking” therapy, Psychoanalysis at the Margins provides an in-depth case study of the role of books, journals, and publishing in the rise and fall of a historically insular profession. It thereby provides a microcosm of the crisis of small scholarly and professional publishing in an era that has witnessed the ascendancy of Internet chat groups, online seminars, Amazon.com, and electronic journal subscriptions.

Analysts, therapists, and other devotees of Freud’s talking cure will be sobered by Stepansky’s assessment. Positioning present-day psychoanalysis as an alternative healing modality, he explores the initiatives that have enabled other alternative professions to survive and even thrive in the face of mainstream opposition. Is it possible, he asks, that the lessons of alternative medicine can guide psychoanalysis to an “optimal marginality” that draws the mainstream to it? Pursuing pathways to this goal, Stepansky enjoins analysts to undertake a host of initiatives in the public interest that bring analytic knowledge to bear in those contexts where it can do the most good. This challenging yet hopeful message is both his farewell and his final gift to the field he served long and well.

Praise for Psychoanalysis at the Margins

“Paul Stepansky, a broad and gifted historian who also reports as an eyewitness, has written a fresh and compelling intellectual history of psychoanalysis in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. By using the idea of social marginality, Stepansky offers a clear and persuasive explanation of what has happened to one of the major movements of the recent past — and why it has happened.”
– John Burnham, Ph.D., Research Professor of History, Ohio State University, and author of Psychoanalysis and American Medicine

“The uniqueness of Psychoanalysis at the Margins derives from a combination of original material not available elsewhere — the history of psychoanalytic publishing and book sales in the United States — and the brilliant scholarship and lucid writing one has come to expect of Dr. Stepansky. He explores concepts of marginalization, fractionation, and so-called theoretical pluralism within a broad cultural and intellectual framework, and ends the book with a surprising suggestion regarding the future role of psychoanalysis. All of this is carried out with the authority that is derived from his nonparochial stance, ranging scholarship, and clear and subtle thinking. Anyone interested in substantive issues in psychoanalysis, including its future status, will have to wrestle with this book.”
– Morris N. Eagle, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University

“Paul Stepansky has written an absolutely stunning book that is as compelling as a good mystery that carries the reader along to a very unsettling conclusion. Alas, the hero of the book as well as the victim is psychoanalysis. Stepansky writes about a subject in the effortless manner of a good author, in the erudite manner of a scholar who has mastered the field, and in the caring manner of someone who loves the subject.”
– Arnold Goldberg, M.D., the Cynthia Oudejan Harris, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Rush Medical College, and Training and Supervising Analyst, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis

“Paul Stepansky may be uniquely qualified, by his personal gifts and his publishing experience, to write such a splendid survey of the current quandary of psychoanalysis. His scholarship is nothing short of staggering yet not pedantic, his judgments empathic but unfailingly fair, and the story he has to tell compulsively readable. I learned a great deal from this remarkable book, and urge anyone who cares about the future of psychoanalysis to read it.”
–Robert R. Holt, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, New York University

“Historian, editor, and publisher, Paul Stepansky is uniquely positioned to chronicle the theoretical fractionation and marginalization that beset contemporary psychoanalysis. Enriched by fascinating commentary about the history of medical discoveries and psychoanalytic politics, Psychoanalysis at the Margins not only dissects the contemporary analytic corpus but prescribes pathways to renewal. Required reading for anyone in or out of psychoanalysis who seeks a discerning appraisal of the field’s current quandary and future prospects.”
– Joseph Lichtenberg, M.D., editor-in-chief of Psychoanalytic Inquiry and the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series

“This book should be read by everyone who cares about psychoanalysis and its contributions to mental health policy and the social sciences. In an unsparing examination of modern psychoanalytic history, Paul Stepansky diagnoses some grave disabilities in its current condition and offers a prognosis that is guarded but not necessarily terminal. If this ailing discipline is to be revived, psychoanalytic theorists and therapists need to pay close attention to Stepansky’s impressive scholarship.”
– Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., Former President, Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association

“With massive documentation across the entire spectrum of physical and mental healing professions, historian Paul Stepansky mounts a provocative thesis that links the fractionation (or pluralism) of psychoanalytic theory and praxis both to the long-acknowledged ‘crisis’ within the field and to the growing public disenchantment with psychoanalysis in its intellectual, cultural, and therapeutic aspects. This book is a clarion call for urgent remedial attention and effective coordinated response.”
– Robert S. Wallerstein, M.D., Former President of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytical Associationtop