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The primary aim of this article is to give a more detailed exposition of the cultural, personal, and theoretical contexts in which the Viennese psychoanalyst, Herbert Silberer's theories were born. When assessing the broader picture that this approach offers, it can be concluded that Silberer was an innovative thinker who inspired several of his contemporaries. Recognized in many respects by the society and scholars of this time, he represented quite a different viewpoint that was significantly influenced by several forms of Western esoteric thinking. Yet his main aim was to contribute to the field of psychoanalysis and develop a theory in which rationalistic psychoanalytic interpretations were combined with nonreductive approaches to mystical experiences. Silberer's name is frequently mentioned in a specific context in which his tragic suicide is emphasized rather than his innovations. Upon evaluating the materials recording Silberer's private life, it seems very likely that his suicide was not triggered by the criticism of Freud alone. Silberer's family affairs, his relationship with his father, and his financial and professional struggles could have all contributed to his tragic decision. This paper contends that Silberer's oeuvre deserves greater attention and must be evaluated based upon its own merit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the milieu of Hermann Rorschach's Psychodiagnostics (1921/2021) under development between 1911 and his death in 1922 and explores new evidence about the direction Rorschach's test might have taken after publication of Psychodiagnostics. This includes direct and indirect influences from turn of the century continental philosophy and science and innovative colleagues in the Swiss psychiatric and psychoanalytic societies. The availability of newly translated scholarship, including the correspondence between Ludwig Binswanger and Hermann Rorschach following the 1921 publication of Psychodiagnostics, Binswanger's posthumous 1923 commentary in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and recent new translation of Psychodiagnostics, permits a fresh appraisal of the milieu and foundations of Rorschach's development. Understanding these sources and influences opens new vistas in reappraising the nature of Rorschach's "test theory" which Rorschach considered undeveloped at the time of his death. This paper presents new evidence that, under the influence of Rorschach's close colleague, Ludwig Binswanger, the Geisteswissenschaften and phenomenology might have figured prominently in future developments. The paper concludes that Rorschach, preoccupied with considerations of kinesthetic subjectivity in his innovative conceptualization of human movement responses, was a nascent phenomenologist whose untimely death cut short further developments in his theory of the test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of the rise of therapeutic culture have tended toward the abstract, in part due to a focus on theory. This article looks at the case of Ernest Dichter's motivational research, particularly a study conducted on fur coats in the late 1950s, to locate this broader cultural shift more materially. Motivational research was a broad project of study that aimed to uncover unconscious consumer desires using the tools of psychology and psychoanalysis. This project materialized culture first through the pen‐and‐paper projective test created for the study, which sorted styles of fur into different classifications of womanhood, and second through the fur coats themselves, which were granted by Dichter a psychological agency of their own in their relationship with middle‐class women. Through this study, Dichter observed a shift in Americans' understanding of the self, a movement away from meeting physiological needs to addressing their inner lives; changing economic conditions had granted more income and free time with which to look inward, and Americans wanted consumer goods to aid in such self‐discovery. Dichter suggested that the fur industry capitalize on this change by emphasizing the versatility of fur and the role of objects more generally in fostering creative self‐expression. The advertising office was where theory was put into practice. In that way, it is a uniquely generative though often overlooked space from which to look into the rise of the therapeutic culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Argentinian psychology has a unique characteristic: it is identified with psychoanalysis. Nonpsychoanalytic theories and therapies are difficult to find. In addition, there is an overt antiscientific attitude within many psychology programs. How should this be explained? In this paper, we claim that a philosophical history of psychology can shed new light on the development of Argentinian psychology by showing that early Argentinian psychoanalysts held positions in the newborn psychology programs and a distinctive stance toward scientific research in general and psychology in particular. In the absence of an explicit and articulate philosophical position, psychoanalysts developed an implicit meta‐theory that helped shape the context that led to the institutionalization and professionalization of psychology in Argentina. Although we do not establish or even suggest a monocausal link between their ideas and the current state of Argentinian psychology, we do claim that their impact should be explored. Finally, we discuss some limitations of our study and suggest future complementary investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present paper is focused on the evolution of the position of the Catholic Church toward psychoanalysis. Even before Freud's The Future of an Illusion (1927), psychoanalysis was criticized by Catholic theologians. Psychoanalysis was viewed with either contempt or with indifference, but nonpsychoanalytic psychotherapy was accepted, especially for pastoral use. Freudian theory remained for most Catholics a delicate and dangerous subject for a long time. From the center to the periphery of the Vatican, Catholic positions against psychoanalysis have varied in the way that theological stances have varied. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, some Catholics changed their attitudes and even practiced psychoanalysis, challenging the interdict of the Holy Office, which prohibited psychoanalytic practice until 1961. During the Cold War, psychoanalysis progressively became more and more relevant within Catholic culture for two main reasons: changes in psychoanalytic doctrine (which began to stress sexuality to a lesser degree) and the increasing number of Catholic psychoanalysts, even among priests. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, psychoanalysis was eventually accepted and became the main topic of a famous speech by Pope Paul VI. This paper illustrates how this acceptance was a sort of unofficial endorsement of a movement that had already won acceptance within the Church. The situation was fostered by people like Maryse Choisy or Leonardo Ancona, who had advocated within the Church for a sui generis use of psychoanalysis (e.g., proposing a desexualized version of Freudian theories), despite warnings and prohibitions from the hierarchies of the Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of Bishop Fulton Sheen in the popularization of Freudian psychoanalysis in the United States during the 1940s and 50s. Social historians argue that Freudian ideas were pervasive in American culture during this period. While their claim speaks mainly to the impact of psychoanalysis on the cultural elite and college educated, they also suggest that Freudian ideas affected ordinary men and women. In the former case, the group impacted is small and not representative of the population as a whole; in the latter, the evidence is sparse and impressionistic. Neglected in their consideration is the influence of Fulton Sheen whose opinions on Freud reached an audience of 30,000,000 during the height of the popularity of his TV show, Life is Worth Living. Sheen's audience was more inclusive and representative of mainstream America. The negative and highly cautionary view of psychoanalysis he presented to many Americans was contrary to that which was promoted to and embraced by many of the college educated and likely shaped both their views of Freud and psychoanalytic therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As much as Robert Bellah's final work, Religion in Human Evolution, has been studied and dissected, no critic underlined the importance of psychoanalysis for its main argument and its theoretical framework. The paper shows the influence exerted by a controversial interpreter of Freud, Norman O. Brown, on Bellah's ideas, intellectual profile, and writing style in the late‐1960s and early 1970s. While in search for a new intellectual voice, Bellah was struck by Brown's work and began to make intensive use of his book, Love's Body, both in his teaching and in his research of the early 1970s, during his so‐called "symbolic realism" period. While Bellah abandoned Brown's ideas and style in the mid‐1970s, some of the basic intuitions he had during that period still survived as one of the major theoretical intuitions of Religion and Human Evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: If his relationship to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis has been widely acknowledged, Claude Lévi‐Strauss’ rapport with C.G. Jung's analytical psychology remains quite obscure. While secondary commentary has been abundant, its approach has above all been intertextual, to the detriment of a rigorously historical reading. Even if certain arguments put forward by supporters of so‐called “influence” deserve to be taken into account, especially because they highlight Lévi‐Strauss ambiguities and paradoxes toward Jung, this paper provides proof that a precise reading of the texts, with the help of recent studies on the intellectual genesis of Lévi‐Strauss, lead to reject the thesis of an unstated debt owed by the French anthropologist to the Zurich psychologist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, attention has been drawn toward an overlooked and nearly forgotten personality type: the ambivert. This paper presents a genealogy of the ambivert, locating the various contexts it traversed in order to highlight the ways in which these places and times have interacted and changed-ultimately elucidating our current situation. Proposed by Edmund S. Conklin in 1923, the ambivert only was meant for normal persons in between the introvert and extravert extremes. Although the ambivert could have been taken up by early personality psychologists who were transitioning from the study of the abnormal to the normal, it largely failed to gain traction. Whether among psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, or applied and personality psychologists, the ambivert was personality non grata. It was only within the context of Eysenck's integrative view of types and traits that the ambivert marginally persisted up to the present day and is now the focus of sales management and popular psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the life and career of Jessie Margaret Murray, the moving spirit behind the foundation of the Medico-Psychological Clinic, the first public clinic in Britain to offer psychoanalytic therapy and training in psychoanalysis. Biographical details of Murray and her close friend and collaborator, Julia Turner, are presented, and possible routes by which the two women may have met are explored. Murray's role in the suffragist movement is described, as well as other networks and professional societies in which she was involved, in particular the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, and her relationship with Marie Stopes. An account is given of events leading up to the founding of the Clinic, its activities, Murray's death, and other factors contributing to its demise. Finally, the Clinic's heritage and implications of the personalities of Murray and Turner for understanding the subsequent development of psycho-analysis in Britain are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evart Van Dieren (1861–1940), a Dutch general practitioner who had a passionate aversion against psychoanalysis, wrote two particularly polemical books contra Freud but nevertheless did not succeed in generating much response. In this paper, some of his objections against psychoanalysis are briefly examined and compared with some present day arguments against Freud by Grünbaum and Crews, with the purpose of finding an answer to the question: What does it take to be a successful or unsuccessful critic? © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the transplantation of psychoanalysis from Europe to Los Angeles and the similarities and differences in followers, cultural attitudes, institutional organization, and patient symptoms. Psychoanalysis in both places attracted psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, artists, writers, and movie people, all committed to “modernism” and cultural change. But special American conditions created greater institutional rigidity, medicalization, and a more diffuse patient symptomatology centered on the maternal relationship. Such conditions also fostered bitter disputes over modifications of psychoanalytic theory and practice which have only recently become less acute as the status of psychoanalysis has declined in America. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1905 and 1910, several Dutch scholars independently “discovered” the rapidly growing psychology of religion. The “empirical” character of this psychology as developed in America provoked very diverse reactions, the differences in which arose from the very different mentalities existing within religiously different segments of Dutch society. This paper focuses on an illustrative example: a dissertation by Johannes G. Geelkerken (1879–1960), which remains one of the best sources of information on the presuppositions and foundations of the early empirical psychology of religion. The ideological, institutional, and national context of Geelkerken's work is discussed. Although the pattern of early development of psychology of religion in The Netherlands was atypical for Europeanized cultures, it has persisted into the present. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Edoardo Weiss's correspondence with S. Freud regarding Concetta Forzano's analysis and Forzano's efforts to intercede with Mussolini on Freud's behalf after the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. Freud's reliance on Mussolini can be explained by traditional Viennese attitudes toward Italy, the Duce's protectiveness about Austrian independence, and the relatively benign attitude of the Fascist regime towards Jews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

H. Glenn Penny. Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. 281 pp. $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8078-5430-1. G. Richards. Putting Psychology in Its Place: A Critical Historical Overview, Second Edition. New York: Routledge, 2002. 368 pp. $25.95 (paper). ISBN 1-84169-234-4. Robert M. Lindner. Rebel Without a Cause: The Story of a Criminal Psychopath. New York: Other Press, 2003. 296 pp. $16.00 (paper). ISBN 1-59051-024-0. Jens Rydström. Sinners and Citizens: Bestiality and Homosexuality in Sweden, 1880–1950. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. 416 pp. (paper). ISBN 0-226-73257-6. Jerome A. Winer and James William Anderson (Eds.). The Annual of Psychoanalysis 31: Psychoanalysis and History. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, Inc. 2003. 288 pp. $49.95. ISBN 0-88163-399-2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]