Propaganda, Prostitution, and Penal Reform: How Psychoanalysis Lost its Public Voice

Flora Lazar, PhD LCSW
The American Psychoanalyst
Volume 53, No 2, Spring/Summer 2019

From the Editor

Dr. Flora Lazar’s article is a searching consideration of the sociocultural frontier of psychoanalysis and its educational mission. Its impassioned message of responsibilities and opportunities in the public domain is deeply informed by her methodical archival review of some historical chapters of the psychoanalytic movement in America. It offers a sober critique of the consequential turn away from engagement in the academic domain of sociopolitical research to the insulation of the consultation room. This inward orientation away from the university model truncated the opportunities for creative intellectual and civic ferment in the educational mission of the psychoanalytic institutions.

The convergence of the fraught present sociopolitical moment in America with such historical perspective makes for a compelling and important reading.
—Luba Kessler, Editor, Issues in Psychoanalytic Education