Robert M. Young Online Writings
'No Easy Answers: Essay Review of Russell Jacoby, The Repression of Psychoanalysis' 33K
Founding Free Associations was not easy. The editorial board of Radical Science, which spawned it, was unanimously opposed to my initiative in proposing it: not enough energy available. The Pilot Issue overcame their reservations: it was gratifyingly well-received. I tried to set the keynote by writing an essay in honour of a writer about psychoanalysis in a broad Marxist tradition whom I greatly admire, Russell Jacoby. His The Repression of Psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the Political Freudians traced the demise of the psychoanalytic left. I summarised the book and ended with a declaration that the editors of Free Associations intended that the journal should continue the work of the radical psychoanalysts. I cannot claim that this vision has been unfalteringly pursued: one can only publish what one can write or what gets submitted. Even so, that has remained my own goal.