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The Americanization of Sigmund Freud: Adaptations of Psychoanalysis before 1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

F. H. Matthews
F. H. Matthews
Affiliation:
University of Hull
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Extract

The early reactions by American intellectuals to the psychoanalytic ideas of Sigmund Freud offer an interesting case study in the ‘Americanization’ of ‘foreign’ ideas. While the heyday of Freudian influence on the lay intelligentsia came after the World War—probably in the 1920s—and the maximum penetration of specialized disciplines by Freudian concepts came after 1930, already by 1917 identifiable and influential groups of thinkers had discovered Freudian ideas, and had reacted to them. The reaction sometimes took the form of outright rejection, but more often that of some form of assimilation, some attempt to use Freudian doctrine in support of a pre-existing ideology, or even to recast present doctrine in the light of Freud's theories. These early reactions foreshadowed the kinds of polemical and ideological utility which psychoanalysis would have on a larger scale after 1920; these first adaptations and reworkings of Freudian ideas prefigured such latter accommodations of Freud to America as Neo-Freudianism and ‘adjustment psychology’. Psychoanalysis quickly became an accepted polemical tool in literary and political debate. To neoromantic radicals it offered a new method of personal salvation by sloughing off skins of civilized repression. On a more complex level of thought, it became one element in the construction of a positivist and determinist system of psychology. At the same time, and sometimes by the same men, it was used—and radically revised—in the ideological endeavour to assimilate deterministic psychology to the persistent optimistic, activist moral code, which many scholars were anxious to harmonize with their new science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , April 1967 , pp. 39 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

page 39 note 1 This article is based on my M.A. thesis, ‘Freud comes to America: the impact of Freudian ideas on American thought, 1909–1917’ (1957), typescript, University of California Library, Berkeley. The main line of interpretation is that of the thesis, but several books published since 1957 have been helpful and suggestive in the revision. Most important is May, Henry F., End of American Innocence (New York, 1959)Google Scholar; May's interpretation had already guided my understanding of the period; both thesis and this article are heavily indebted to him. Rieff, Philip, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (New York, 1959)Google Scholar, has become fundamental to anyone attempting to understand the implications of Freudian theory. Noble, David, The Paradox of Progressive Thought (Minneapolis, 1958)Google Scholar, is the best statement of the relation between values and theories in the social science of the period. Lubove, Roy, The Professional Altruist: the Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880–1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, touches upon some of the men discussed here and upon the penetration of professional social work by Freudian and Adlerian ideas. Hofstadter, Richard, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York, 1963)Google Scholar, has among many other resources a valuable discussion of the ‘life-adjustment’ ideas of American pedagogy. The article by Burnham, John C., ‘Psychiatry, psychology and the Progressive Movement’, American Quarterly, 12 (Winter 1960), 457–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, finds similar themes in a broad survey of psychiatric thought in the period.

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page 50 note 1 Hall, , Life and Confessions, pp. 12, 409, 413Google Scholar. Hall's statement is suggestive of the effect at least of superficial exposure to Freudian ideas, and perhaps even of more thorough grounding: what may happen is not so much catharsis as conscious suppression of a much more thorough kind, to present to the world the personality approved by the theory. See below, p. 54. On Adler, see Ansbacher, Heinz L. and Ansbacher, Rowena R., The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler: a Systematic Presentation in Selections from his Writings (London, 1958), esp. pp. 326 ff., 334, 344–7Google Scholar; Mullahy, Patrick, Oedipus Myth and Complex: a Review of Psychoanalytic Theory (New York, 1948), pp. 114–28Google Scholar; Brown, J. A. C., Freud and the Post-Freudians (London, 1961), pp. 38–41Google Scholar. Adler's theories show many similarities with the revisions of Freud proposed by Putnam and later by the ‘Neo-Freudians’.

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page 56 note 1 Hofstadter, , Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, pp. 323ffGoogle Scholar. This term is used here in a broad sense, to signify the concern of educators to provide training for ‘life-situations’, rather than the sharpening of mental faculties or the inculcation of information, the concern with mental health and the ability of individuals to ‘relate’ smoothly with others. The specifically named ‘Life Adjustment’ movement in secondary education came in the 1940s and 1950s, as a summation of general ideas, a codification which proved a perfect target for hostile critics. See Cremin, Lawrence A., The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education 1876–1957 (New York, 1961), pp. 332–8Google Scholar.

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page 56 note 3 Lubove, , Professional Altruist, pp. 88–9Google Scholar; Cremin; Transformation, pp. 207–15, esp. 214–15.

page 57 note 1 Katz, Daniel, ‘Edwin Bissell Holt, 1873–1946’, Science, 103 (17 05 1946), 612CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Langfeld, Herbert S., ‘E. B. Holt’, Psychological Review, 53 (09 1946), 251–258CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for more intimate data of Holt's life and eccentricities.

page 57 note 2 Quillian, William F. Jr, ‘Evolution and moral theory in America’, in Persons, Stow (ed.), Evolutionary Thought in America (New York, 1956; 1st. pub. 1950), pp. 398ff., esp. pp. 399–400Google Scholar on Spencer, Fiske, Savage; p. 405 on Dewey's scientific ethics; James, William, ‘The gospel of relaxation’, in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York, 1897)Google Scholar; James, , Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (N.Y., 1908, 1st pub. 1900), p. 29 and passimGoogle Scholar. Curti, Merle, Social Ideals of American Educators (Paterson, N.J., 1959; 1st pub. 1935), p. 449Google Scholar.

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page 58 note 2 Ibid. pp. 84, 87.

page 58 note 3 Ibid. p. 121; ch. 4, ‘Broader aspects of Freudian ethics’. Holt's use of the child-and-flame example was a restatement of one of the central doctrines of ‘modern’ educational theory, the teaching of morality by directly connecting action and consequence in the child's mind, in behaviouristic terms. Cf. Cremin, , Transformation of the School, p. 93Google Scholar.

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page 60 note 3 Personal observation by the author, which could probably be matched by any American living in Europe. I am also indebted to Ronald E. Coons of the University of Connecticut for similar observations of exchanges between German and American scholars.

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