Product Description

A Communist, feminist, and analysand asks what the social function of psychoanalysis should be and condemns what it has become

lambasts mainstream psychoanalysis for its failure to grapple with pressing political and social matters pertinent to its patients condition. Gifted with insight and compelled by fury, Catherine Clment contrasts the original, inspirational psychoanalytical work of Freud and Lacan to the obsessive imitations of their uninspired followersthe weary sons of Freud.

The analysts once attentive ear has become deaf to the broader questions of therapeutic practice. Clement asks whether the perspective of socialism, brought to this study by a woman who is herself an analysand, can fill the gap. She reflects on her own history, as well as on that of psychoanalysis and the French left, to show what an activist and feminist restoration of the talking cure might look like.