Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America

by Lawrence R. Samuel

“Psychology has stepped down from the university chair into the marketplace” was how the New York Times put it in 1926. Another commentator in 1929 was more biting. Psychoanalysis, he said, had over a generation, “converted the human scene into a neurotic.” Freud first used the word around 1895, and by the 1920s psychoanalysis was a phenomenon to be reckoned with in the United States. How it gained such purchase, taking hold in virtually every aspect of American culture, is the story Lawrence R. Samuel tells in Shrink , the first comprehensive popular history of psychoanalysis in America. Arriving on the scene at around the same time as the modern idea of the self, psychoanalysis has both shaped and reflected the ascent of individualism in American society. Samuel traces its path from the theories of Freud and Jung to the innermost reaches of our current me-based, narcissistic culture. Along the way he shows how the arbiters of culture, high and low, from public intellectuals, novelists, and filmmakers to Good Housekeeping and the Cosmo girl, mediated or embraced psychoanalysis (or some version of it), until it could be legitimately viewed as an integral feature of American consciousness.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Social Science, History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Lawrence R. Samuel is the founder of Culture Planning LLC, a Miami– and New York–based resource offering cultural insight to Fortune 500 organizations. He is the author of The End of the Innocence: The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, Future: A Recent History, Rich: The Rise and Fall of American Wealth Culture, Freud on Madison Avenue: Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in America, Supernatural America: A Cultural History, and a number of other books.

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is pretty good as long as you don't expect it to be more than it is: a cultural history derived from reading contemporaneous periodicals over the past 100 plus years. Strongest on the early decades—the 20s, 50s, and 60s—weakest is the 80s and 90s.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Detailed history on the practice of psychiatry. Largely ignores the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the practice of medicine and the content of the diagnostic manual.
In need of better editing for redundancy and too many sentences entirely enclosed in parentheses. (Footnotes, for god's sake, footnotes!)
The writer is an unabashed apologist for anti-neurobiological psychiatry. He is at best disingenuous and at worst, but more likely, a bald faced liar.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing. I started it hopefully; Samuel understands both psychoanalysis and its critics, and his writing is vert accessible. But the accessibility shades into superficiality. The book goes for pages at a time seeming like a bunch if random notes cut and pasted together without much of a point. In the end, the main argument is that psychoanalysis has survived many alleged death blows and will continue. I had hoped for a deeper argument.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

while I think most of psychoanalysis is just pure speculation, it's persistence is admirable. people just want someone to listen to them.. that's what it boils down to.

[James Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding overview of the cultural influence of psychoanalysis on America!