Talk:Otto Fenichel

Masson on Otto Fenichel

Jeffrey M. Masson writes in his famous book "Final Analysis" on page 183 a short information referring to Fenichel and the Freud Archives. I am just going to quote the part:

• Otto Fenichel, for example, the great left-wing German psychoanalyst (about whom Russell Jacoby has recently written an excellent book) was represented [in the Archives] by a series of secret letters. In these letters he issued instructions that when an analytic institute investigated a senior analyst for any infraction of ethical conduct, this information should not be made public, lest it damage the credibility of psychoanalysis. An analyst's real flaws were to be kept confidential within a small circle of elite analysts, who presumably would let the analyst know they knew about his "weakness"-which would permit them, and only them, to be able to control his behavior. This is, of course, the sort of thing that goes on every day in the United Nations (think of the Waldheim affair), or the United States government, as my friends reminded me. But one does not expect psychoanalysis to be no better than the government. Fenichel felt that knowledge of the true state of affairs would lower the public's idealization of psychoanalysis. It was astonishing that such views could come from one of the great progressive thinkers in the field. Where was Freud's vaunted confidence in the truth? How could it be bad for the public to know the truth? It was only bad for the image of psychoanalysis.

Austerlitz -- 88.72.24.165 09:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin

Is Otto Fenichel related to Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, the political theorist, who emigrated to the USA from Germany (she was born in Berlin) and also authored a book, _The Concept of Representation_ (1967)?

Bad refs and claims

e.g. this

as well as displaying Fenichel's continuing Marxist affiliation.[10]

is reffed by the work itself. So POV nonsense. Zezen (talk) 08:50, 31 October 2019 (UTC)