Monday, July 29

Freud on the death of psychoanalysis



"In the course of these years I have read, perhaps a dozen times, in the reports of the transactions of certain congresses and of meetings of scientific societies, or in reviews of certain publications, that psychoanalysis was now dead, that it was finally overcome and settled. The answer to all this would have to read like the telegram from Mark Twain to the newspaper that falsely announced his death:
 "The report of my death is grossly exaggerated."
After each of these death-notices, psychoanalysis has gained new followers and co-workers and has created for itself new organs. Surely to be reported dead is an advance over being treated with dead silence!"

Source: "The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement", Sigmund Freud (1914). Translation by A. A. Brill (1917)