A recent book review in the New York Times magazine of Love’s Labor by Stephen Grosz discussed psychoanalysis almost as much as it discussed the book itself. As is always the case when popular media turns its attention to psychoanalysis, it mentions the field’s “demise” in the 1970s after about 50 years of prominence in psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, cinema, and other genres. It is now nearly a full generation since psychoanalysis occupied a reified sphere of influence in the social zeitgeist. The fall was hard. For years psychoanalysis told the public that mental pathology was the result of internal sexual or aggressive conflicts dating back to early childhood, or the failures of mothers who cursed their children with crippling mental illnesses through their overly cold, or overly enmeshed, mothering. Then in 1952, biological psychiatry swooped in with a pill (a pill!) that seemed to eliminate psychosis. Pills for mania, depression, and anxiety followed shortly. Between the onslaught of medications and a general sense that the infatuation with psychoanalysis had gone too far, the sway that analysts held over popular culture faded quickly. Now, another 50 years after the end of the psychoanalytic era, the profession carries on, but often quietly and behind the scenes. If books on analytic theory used to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, now they might sell a few thousand. If social climbers used to brag about being in analysis and with whom, now analysis is whispered about, or kept out of the conversation. I’m not sure that there are many social circles left where declaring oneself a psychoanalyst leads to impressed and excited chatter. Instead it often leads to an awkward silence, as though one proclaimed oneself a blood-letter or a lobotomist.
And yet every year, hundreds of clinicians begin the long and arduous process (usually 6 years or longer) to train in psychoanalysis. And every day, those of us in the profession continue to witness remarkable transformations in our patients.
While it is never fun to enter a profession that has been referred to as “dying” for several decades, I see one major benefit to becoming an analyst now and not in the 1950s. Back then, society ascribed near magical powers of omniscience to analysts. This wish for an all-seeing father drew many into analysis, but it also drew a particular kind of person to the job. A long-standing criticism of psychoanalysis was related to the seeming saturation of the field with narcissistically organized practitioners. Their own analyses, often conducted by more narcissistically organized analysts, often failed to fully address the omnipotent wish for dominance and control that drew them to the profession (Kernberg, 2016). Patients and the public eventually grew tired of the pomposity and grandiosity of analysts and psychoanalysis.
I’ll tell you what: Many fewer narcissists looking for social status are becoming psychoanalysts.
Instead, like the depressed child of a narcissistic parent, this generation of analysts exist much more in the depressive position than did the omniscient, omnipotent analyst living much of the time in a paranoid-schizoid narcissistic position.
In my experience, while certainly not devoid of a self-aggrandizing type of analyst, the field has shifted much more to sensitive, deeply feeling practitioners who undergo the rigorous, expensive, and time-consuming training because they feel that the knowledge and the skills of psychoanalysis will help them provide better care to their patients. And as Grosz and his books describe, the work of analysis is no less magical for not being magic. In his conversation with journalist Daphne Merkin, he notes “When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us — we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don’t understand.” (Merkin 2026). This humble description of both the need for psychoanalysis and one of its basic truths might feel profound to those outside the field, but most psychoanalysts will simply nod their heads in affirmation.
So maybe I joined a dying field. But I also joined one filled with a new generation of caring, committed people watching with awe as their work with patients creates deep and lasting change.