This edited volume challenges our negative and incorrect definitions of psychoanalysis by focusing on the notion that psychoanalysis once was, and can once again be, a movement for social justice. Taking the work of Erich Fromm as a guide, the chapters in this volume highlight psychoanalysis’ social justice origins, while illustrating how psychoanalysis – in both an interpretive role and as a clinical tool – can improve our understanding of contemporary social problems and address the effects of those problems within the clinical setting.

Drawing on interviews with witnesses to the early psychoanalytic movement as well as new archival material, this chronicle seeks to rescue from obscurity the history of a movement usually regarded as an expensive form of treatment for the economically & intellectually advantaged.

What does it feel like to encounter ourselves and one another as implicated subjects, both in our everyday lives and in the context of our work as clinicians, and how does this matter? With contributions from a diverse group of relational psychoanalytic thinkers, this book reads Michael Rothberg’s concept of the implicated subject—the notion that we are continuously implicated in injustices even when not perpetrators—as calling us to elaborate what it feels like to inhabit such subjectivities in relation to others both similarly and differently situated. Implication and anti-Black racism are central to many chapters, with attention given to the unique vulnerability of racial minority immigrants, to Native American genocide, and to the implication of ordinary Israelis in the oppression of Palestinians. The book makes the case that the therapist’s ongoing openness to learning of our own implication in enactments is central to a relational sensibility and to a progressive psychoanalysis. As a contribution to the necessary and long-overdue conversation within the psychoanalytic field about racism, social injustice, and ways to move toward a just society, this book will be essential for all relational psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

What is maturity? Politics of Maturity scrutinizes the process of maturing and how--and why--we have traditionally conceptualized it. Why is it that when we picture an "adult" we often envision someone who is married, has children, and is economically successful? Tanya Loughead challenges such traditional notions of maturity by raising fundamental questions about society and its structure. Which structures and experiences help us to mature or block us from maturing? One thing is certain: we do not mature by ourselves. This book argues that lack of maturity in society is not merely a problem of individual personalities; it is equally a political and philosophical problem that requires revolutionary rethinking and redefinition.

This book is based on the premise that understanding fascism is crucial for defeating it. Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements suggests fascism must be understood according to two “dimensions.” First, fascism is a social movement seeking power, always already connected to sources of power. Hence, fascism cannot be defeated by policing it as a crime problem, nor therapeutically treating it as a pathology of mental health. Second, fascists have cognitive and emotional needs they are seeking to fulfill through their participation in the movement, but the presence of these motivations must be held in tension with the fact that fascists are responsible for their choices and that these individual motivations also exist in a wider social context of capitalism and systems of supremacy. The book opens by examining some psychological elements of recruitment and disengagement from fascist movements, before addressing broader social narratives, concluding with the limitations of an approach that is grounded in the national security state that relies on individualized, perpetrator-centered interventions. Rejecting centrist paradigms that see fascism as “extremism” or “accelerationism,” Braune argues that fascism must be addressed in its specificity and uniqueness as an ideology and movement. Ultimately, she argues, fascism can only be defeated by countervailing social movements that not only demand radical social change but offer alternative spaces of belonging, community care, and the search for meaning. Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements is a philosophical contribution to antifascist theory and practice that will be appreciated by academics, students, and activists concerned about fascism today.

After World War I, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Erik Erikson, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Helene Deutsch, and other psychoanalysts created a network of free outpatient clinics and pioneered important innovations in psychoanalytic treatment and method. In this book, Elizabeth Ann Danto narrates how these psychoanalysts implemented their social activism and their commitment to treating the poor and working classes. She explores the successes and challenges faced by the Berlin Poliklinik, the Vienna Ambulatorium, Alfred Adler's child guidance clinics, and Wilhelm Reich's Sex-Pol, which provided free community-based counseling and sex education and aimed to end public repression of sexuality.

As inequality widens in all sectors of contemporary society, we must ask: is psychoanalysis too white and well-to-do to be relevant to social, economic, and racial justice struggles? Are its ideas and practices too alien for people of color? Can it help us understand why systems of oppression are so stable and how oppression becomes internalized? In A People’s Historyof Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology, Daniel José Gaztambide reviews the oft-forgotten history of social justice in psychoanalysis. Starting with the work of Sigmund Freud and the first generation of left-leaning psychoanalysts, Gaztambide traces a series of interrelated psychoanalytic ideas and social justice movements that culminated in the work of Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, and Ignacio Martín-Baró. Through this intellectual genealogy, Gaztambide presents a psychoanalytically informed theory of race, class, and internalized oppression that resulted from the intertwined efforts of psychoanalysts and racial justice advocates over the course of generations and gave rise to liberation psychology. This book is recommended for students and scholars engaged in political activism, critical pedagogy, and clinical work.