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REVIEWS
| Secrets of the Soul. A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis. By Eli Zaretsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. xv plus 429 pp. $30.00).
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| Eli Zaretsky has set himself a very ambitious goal: to bring together developments in psychoanalysis in the West with wider cultural changes and show a relationship between the two. Although his book is liberally sprinkled with interesting information, on the whole he does not succeed in his project. Moreover, Zaretsky's errors of detail cast doubt on the accuracy of his broader syntheses. |
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Culturally and socially, Zaretsky's book is a study of the "second industrial revolution," that period in the West after 1880 when nations had completed their major transportation and communication networks, had begun to use electricity as the most flexible source of power for manufacturing, transportation, and illumination, and had begun the application of science to industrial processes and to the creation of new and improved consumer and industrial products.1 "The organization of [Zaretsky's] book mirrors the trajectory of the second industrialization: part one (1890–1914) evokes its origins, part two (1919–1939) its Fordist heyday, and part three (1945–1976) its transformation into the Keynesian welfare state and its decline" (pp. 8–9). |
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Zaretsky says he will demonstrate both how psychoanalysis enhanced the second industrial revolution and in turn was enhanced by it. While the first industrial revolution emphasized community relations, the second put a stress on a "singular personal life," precisely that which psychoanalysis also made possible. Throughout his book, Zaretsky is fond of religious metaphors and comparisons; one of his early ones is that psychoanalysis enabled the second industrial revolution in the way that Calvinism enabled the first (pace Max Weber). |
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Now to some of the problems in Zaretsky's narrative. Here is a passage from a chapter entitled "Gender, Sexuality, and Personal Life." I am citing it in order to demonstrate that where Zaretsky claims connections, I see none:
Freud's idea of a personal unconscious, and of a distinctively individual constellation of sexual wishes that first take shape in relation to one's parents, resonated with still broader currents. The Freudian unconscious appeared along with such inventions as the typewriter, film, the moving-picture camera, and the first mass daily newspapers read by both men and women. The new media had, along with crime, two main topics: wars, such as the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, and the Moroccan crisis; and sexual scandals, such as the 1907 Eulenberg scandal in Germany, which revealed that the Kaiser was surrounded by a coterie of homosexuals, and the 1889 Cleveland Street scandal in England, which concerned the discovery of a homosexual brothel allegedly run by several lords (p. 63).
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There are many other passages, particularly those attempting to connect Fordism (mass production and mass consumption) and psychoanalysis, that rest on sweeping generalizations so that one can only wonder: are they true? do they make sense? |
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Clearly Zaretsky has read across a wide variety of disciplines in order to write a book of synthesis. His research is impressive. Unfortunately, and perhaps understandably, he has been unable to master all the fields he attempts to cover. From my area of scholarship, I can see quite a few blunders; I imagine, therefore, experts in other areas could point out inaccuracies as well. These errors inevitably cast doubt on the validity of Zaretsky's generalizations. |
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