Ricky DeSantis: Translating Psychoanalysis. From Vienna to New York and Back Again

In the years following the »Anschluss«, many Jewish psychoanalysts and philosophers crossed the Atlantic, making their homes in New York City. These immigrants brought with them not only a new psychiatric tradition, but also a slew of political commitments. Like any migration, however, the tradition that arrived was translated and reworked into something new. The first part of the lecture looks at the translation of psychoanalysis into the American lexicon and culture, with particular focus on the ways in which figures like Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse brought with them a psy-choanalytically inspired politics of sexual liberation.

Since the early 1980s, however, psychoanalysis has largely been replaced in the US by a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy (often branded as »mindfulness« therapy) and pharmaceutical drugs. Many of these changes have in turn been exported around the globe—for instance, CBT is now the most widely practiced form of therapy in the world. The second part examines the current state of psychotherapy in Austria (and Western Europe more broadly), focusing on the ways in which American approaches to psychiatry have in turn influenced the political values of contemporary Austria.