New heads for Freud's hydra: Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles

Abstract

This paper describes the transplantation of psychoanalysis from Europe to Los Angeles and the similarities and differences in followers, cultural attitudes, institutional organization, and patient symptoms. Psychoanalysis in both places attracted psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, artists, writers, and movie people, all committed to "modernism" and cultural change. But special American conditions created greater institutional rigidity, medicalization, and a more diffuse patient symptomatology centered on the maternal relationship. Such conditions also fostered bitter disputes over modifications of psychoanalytic theory and practice which have only recently become less acute as the status of psychoanalysis has declined in America.

The COVID-19 Saga: Myths, Allegories and the Aftermath for Contemporary and Future Practice

“…From a psychoanalytical perspective, some scholars interpret this myth as the spiritual purification emerging from burning the myriad psychological problems and the desires of the flesh occurring at the roots of human evolution. In order to defeat the Hydra, Heracles calls Iolaos for help, who symbolically demonstrates "the voice or vision of consciousness" [15]. From another allegorical perspective, Heracles' courageous victories over monsters and other dangerous enemies could also be interpreted as Christ-like mastery of earthly evils, while beating the Hydra could account for the defeat of the death [16].…”