Sex and psychodynamic psychiatry: selected topics. Editors' introduction.

Abstract

Freud based his depth psychology on a theoretical model of psychosexual development. This was immediately criticized by Karen Horney (Horney, 1924), and much later by Paul Chodoff, a founding member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. So universally accepted was Freud’s psychosexual developmental paradigm that articles written by scholars who did not accept its validity were not accepted for publication by official psychoanalytic journals. Chodoff’s well-known critique of Freud’s model was published not in a psychoanalytic journal but in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Chodoff, 1966). Another founding member of the American Academy, Judd Marmor, was the only prominent psychoanalyst/psychiatrist to challenge the otherwise universally accepted belief that homosexuality was inherently pathological (Marmor, 1980). Interestingly, Marmor’s influence was far greater in psychiatry than organized psychoanalysis. It was not until publication of influential books by Isay (Isay, 1989), Lewes (Lewes, 1988), and Friedman (Friedman, 1988) in the 1980s that Marmor’s perspective came to be viewed as prescient. During the two decades following WWII significant interest in human sexual behavior developed in universities. For instance, the monumental studies, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948), and Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953), were published by Kinsey and colleagues during that time. Most psychoanalytic literature during those years, however, supported or illustrated the usefulness of Freud’s developmental model. Today, Freud’s psychosexual paradigm is generally viewed as being outdated. It has not yet been replaced by a comparably inclusive developmental model, or perspective. Instead, the field of psychoanalytic psychology is riven by heated debates between followers of different schools.