Psychoanalytic Practice and State Regulation

Ian Parker is Professor of Psychology in the Discourse Unit at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is widely published, and his books include 'The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology' (1989), 'Psychoanalytic Culture: Psychoanalytic Discourse in Western Society' (1997), 'Critical Discursive Psychology' (2002), 'Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction' (2004) and 'Psychoanalytic Practice and State Regulation' (2008). Simona Revelli is a psychoanalyst who works in private practice in London and the translator of a number of Italian psychoanalytic contributions. She is a full member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK, the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, The Guild of Psychotherapists and the Society For Existential Analysis, and an affiliate member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research.

'To preserve and protect the practice of psychoanalysis, analysts and therapists must become aware of the threats to psychoanalysis posed by the rush by differing state legislatures to regulate psychoanalysis. This incredibly valuable book provides clinicians with an accurate portrait of what is taking place in many differing countries. It also offers a psychoanalytical understanding of why analysts have been so passive when under such threat, and it proposes solutions to the dilemma the profession faces. It is a work of leadership, something sorely missed amongst this important profession. It should be read and discussed by all psychoanalysts and therapists if they truly wish the profession tosurvive.'- Christopher Bollas'... deepens and theorises in an international context the growing concern of many like myself, who fought for years for statutory regulation of psychotherapy...'- Andrew Samuels'Readers in humanities tend to ignore the fact that psychoanalysis is not primarily an instrument of cultural studies, but a clinical practice, a social link which deals with the hard reality of symptoms. The shift from purely theoretical topics to the hard Leninist questions about psychoanalysis as social practice, its state regulation, its compliance with or subversion of hegemonic power relations, is especially pertinent today, when we are witnessing a renewed world-wide attempt to subsume psychoanalysis under the grid of medical establishment. "Psychoanalytic Practice and State Regulation" does this Leninist job with brio - it is a book for everyone who deals in any way with psychoanalysis!'- Slavoj Zizek

• Foreword -- Introduction: psychoanalytic practice and state regulation -- Contexts -- Psychoanalysis and state regulation -- Responsibility and accountability in psychoanalysis -- Morals and psychoanalytic education -- Why is psychoanalysis not in trouble? -- Psychoanalysis and its self-mutilation -- Responses -- How does “the state” regulate? -- Psychoanalytic training in a culture of competencies -- Of teaching and the university discourse -- Regulation or ethics as the basis of psychoanalytic training -- International Contexts and Responses -- The analyst’s desire between singularity of the act and “a few others” -- The double denial and the double bind of psychologization: the Accoyer Amendment revisited -- The situation of psychoanalysis in France -- Regulation, ethics, and freedom -- Psychoanalysis and regulation in Japan -- The Italian lesson -- Psychology, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis in Italy -- 1989–2005: That is, psychoanalysis against itself -- Lessons and Directions -- Global psychoanalyst? -- Unconsciously generating inevitability? Workable accountability alternatives to the statutory regulation of the psychological therapies -- Psychoanalysis and regulation