The Americanization of Sigmund Freud: Adaptations of Psychoanalysis before 1917

Abstract

The early reactions by American intellectuals to the psychoanalytic ideas of Sigmund Freud offer an interesting case study in the ‘Americanization’ of ‘foreign’ ideas. While the heyday of Freudian influence on the lay intelligentsia came after the World War—probably in the 1920s—and the maximum penetration of specialized disciplines by Freudian concepts came after 1930, already by 1917 identifiable and influential groups of thinkers had discovered Freudian ideas, and had reacted to them. The reaction sometimes took the form of outright rejection, but more often that of some form of assimilation, some attempt to use Freudian doctrine in support of a pre-existing ideology, or even to recast present doctrine in the light of Freud's theories. These early reactions foreshadowed the kinds of polemical and ideological utility which psychoanalysis would have on a larger scale after 1920; these first adaptations and reworkings of Freudian ideas prefigured such latter accommodations of Freud to America as Neo-Freudianism and ‘adjustment psychology’. Psychoanalysis quickly became an accepted polemical tool in literary and political debate. To neoromantic radicals it offered a new method of personal salvation by sloughing off skins of civilized repression. On a more complex level of thought, it became one element in the construction of a positivist and determinist system of psychology. At the same time, and sometimes by the same men, it was used—and radically revised—in the ideological endeavour to assimilate deterministic psychology to the persistent optimistic, activist moral code, which many scholars were anxious to harmonize with their new science.

John Watson's paradoxical struggle to explain Freud.

“…Historians have called the process by which Freud's ideas were assimilated into American culture the Americanization of Freud (Gifford, 1991; Matthews, 1967). This culture included not only popular culture but also the cultural matrix within which psychological theory was embedded.…”

Popularizing American psychotherapy: The Emmanuel Movement, 1906–1910.

“…3 Initially conceived as a local cooperative venture between Boston physicians and Episcopalian ministers, what came to be known as the Emmanuel Movement began as an experiment in public health that aimed to provide impoverished victims of neurasthenia and other functional nervous disorders with a "fusion of religious faith and scientific knowledge." 4 The movement's name stemmed from its affiliation with one of Boston's most venerated institutions, the Emmanuel Church, which was located on Newbury Street, near the Public Garden. By 1909 a host of similar ventures had been launched across the nation in Brooklyn, Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Seattle, and elsewhere.…”