I have to admit that Americans writing about psychoanalysis, especially Lacan, make me nervous. Sherry Turkle's Psychoanalytic Politics, however, is an exception to this rule, with Turkle herself addressing the ways in which different cultures (in her examples, French and American culture) have a habit of adopting those aspects of psychoanalysis that suit them and leaving behind what is challenging and subversive.

The strength of Turkle's study is her willingness to get her hands dirty. She doesn't just read Lacan at a distance: in order to research this book, she spoke to hundreds of people involved in the French psychoanalytic scene, read extensively, and shows a sophisticated understanding of this cultural context. Also in Turkle's favor is the timing of her study. The first edition of this book was published in 1978, three years before Lacan's death, which means that her research was conducted at the perfect sweet spot in his career when he was revered and yet beginning to unravel. The 1992 second edition, which was the one I read, provides some interesting updates and revisions, but the heart of the book is already there from the beginning.

Turkle begins by pointing out that the explosive interest in Lacan and psychoanalysis in France, leading to the creation of a "French Freud," was a peculiar convergence of historical and cultural circumstances, including the changing fortunes of Marxism and existentialism and, of course, the events of May 1968. Up until this time, psychoanalysis had been relatively unpopular in France.

She makes a pointed contrast between the French and American receptions of Freud's ideas. American cultural values meant that psychoanalysis was quickly embraced as a therapeutic tool, albeit usually in a way that often stripped it off its most subversive elements. In France, by contrast, psychoanalysis had little impact beyond the cultural sphere - the surrealists, for example. In the wake of May 1968, however, Turkle argues that French society had a new thirst for a politics of the personal, and Lacanian psychoanalysis fitted this purpose perfectly. She compares Lacan a number of times to Luther, and to Lacanian psychoanalysis as a form of Freudian "protestantism," a worthy historical comparison that I do not recall having encountered elsewhere.

Turkle spends a good deal of necessary time in the subsequent parts of the book dealing with the politics of French psychoanalysis, both its own internal political schisms and contradictions, and its relationship to other particular discourses and institutions. Lacan is to be found at the center of all these debates, an ambiguous figure insofar as his teachings provide his listeners and readers with the tools to challenge and undermine authority, even as he increasingly asserts it through the Ecole freudienne and, later, the university at Vincennes.

The contradictions Turkle explores are fascinating and insightful, often deploying Lacan's own theoretical ideas against his practical actions in a way that highlights the paradoxical fascination of the man. The book also includes chapters on the various impact the French psychoanalytic movement has had in other directions - its penetration into popular culture, for instance, or the rise of the anti-psychiatry movement associated with Deleuze and Guattari.

The latter parts of the book focus on Lacan's visit to America, his growing obscurantism, and a very fair (and, I think, rather generous) assessment by Turkle of his later fascination with knot theory. The second edition also provides an extensive summary of the consequences of Lacan's death and the inheritance of his legacy by Jacques-Alain Miller. For me, this was territory that had already been well-covered by others - Elisabeth Roudinesco, for example - but Turkle's account certainly provides a useful (if now out-of-date) commentary on the state of the Lacanian legacy.

On the whole, I found Psychoanalytic Politics to be a well-researched and theoretically sophisticated look at the history and sociology of French psychoanalysis, with Lacan at its center. Turkle's book is remarkable for the way the measured way it engages with and evaluates this cultural phenomenon, and despite being published in 1978, it remains as relevant and insightful as ever. ( )

This book is aimed at anyone interested in the history of the '60s and '70s in france, in how psychoanalysis (especially Lacanian psychoanalysis) became at that time 'the thing to do'. After May '68 and the turbulent events that shook Parisian society, many people turned to psychoanalysis as a way to understand the events, and further, as a way to understand the self- and most importantly, the political self. It has to be underlined that in the '50s psychoanalysis in France was resisted and almost non-existent as a cultural phenomenon. Which makes its widespread popularity in the '60s-'70s all the more pertinent and interesting.

The chapters that I most enjoyed in Turkle's book have to do with the cultural appeal of psychoanalysis and with the links with politics. To me, this is a very good question- why people, in specific times & places, have turned to psychoanalysis en masse in order to find answers to various kinds of questions- and why in other times / places they turn against it, again en masse. Turkle provides some answers which have to do with the French (especially Parisian) fascination with left-wing politics in the '60s. Lacanian theory, which is firmly anti-adaptational and in a way firmly anti-establishment, provided a good match for the political climate of the time. An interesting study and question would be how things came to change in the '90s- for example in the UK and the US many psychoanalysts nowadays believe that the only way for psychoanalysis to continue existing is through empirical 'proof' that it works. This is a misguided and ultimately doomed, as I see it, effort since clinical psychoanalytic work is so complex and multifaceted that 'testing' it experimentally is impossible- and actually, it's also against all epistemological assumptions that psychoanalysis makes. But it would be a fascinating question to study how and why this shift has occured, to what wider cultural tendencies it's connected.

Turkle provides a chapter about psychoanalysis in France in the '90s (this is included only in the 2nd edition), but unfortunately it centers only on the trials and tribulations of the Lacanian psychoanalytic institutes following Lacan's death in the early '80s. The shocking stories about J. A. Miller's accent to power and the fights and disagreements (and many group splits) that happened around that, are interesting enough. But I had two problems with these descriptions- first, they didn't provide a context at all. There was no mention of the wider cultural milieu in Paris at the time. As for the descriptions of the splits and fights, they often verged on the edge of being gossipy and almost a bit voyeristic for my taste. Yes, it is interesting and meaningful to read about how the Lacanians fought so much among themselves at the time when their maitre was dying. But it would also be interesting and I think, ultimately more satisfying, to connect these shifts with the changing political and cultural climate in the '80s and '90s.

Generally though this is quite a good historical documentation of events in the French psychoanalytic world. Elisabeth Rudinesco's book 'Lacan and co' (hard to be found at the moment) documents some of the same events and is highly recommended.
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