Review : Kojin Karatani & The Return of the Thirties : Psychoanalysis in / of Japan (original) (raw)

Already in the 1950s some were proclaiming the twentieth century the " psychoanalytic century. " As it happened, they were right. But to which psychoanalysis were they referring? For clearly there has never been one psychoanalysis, as scholars of various persuasions have noted. Even during Freud's life as a psychoanalyst, from 1896-1939, we find a multitude of possible psychoanalyses at work. Freud himself is responsible for this situation, since he changed his views as often as he wished-with or without comment. As for Freud's most gifted followers, such as Otto Rank, Carl Jung, and Sandor Ferenczi, they quite naturally took this important lesson to heart: they made psychoanalysis their own. Of course, only Freud was permitted to do as he pleased without being judged a heretic or " wild " analyst. Only Freud could wander from the path of true psychoanalysis, even if there never was one. Debate among the many variants or, better, deviants of psychoanalysi...