[Psychoanalysis and engagement: Otto Fenichel and the political Freudians].

This essay is a critique of Russell Jacoby's The repression of psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the political Freudians (New York, Basic Books, 1983), translated into French by P.U.F. Jacoby depicts Fenichel and his circle of colleagues as political Freudians whose early years were decisively colored by radical youth movements, leftwing politics, the early inspiration of the Russian Revolution, a serious immersion in Marxist culture, a commitment to either socialist or communist parties, and a desire to integrate classical psychoanalysis into a a broader framework of Marxist social theorizing. He centers his book around the archival discovery of the Rundbriefe, 119 circular letters written during Fenichel's exile from 1934 to 1945. He discusses the impact of Wilhelm Reich's ideas and career on the Fenichel circle. Fascism and exile from Europe shattered the lives and commitments of the political Freudians. This essay focuses on Jacoby's use and abuse of the concepts of Americanization, medicalization, the competition from the neo-Freudians, and the apparent silence and "self-repression" of this group's past and leftwing identity once in America. It concludes with a critical analysis of Fenichel's psychoanalytic ethic, which, while engagé, was not Marxist. Fenichel was oriented toward contributing to both psychoanalytic practice and theory. His ethic precluded the intrusion of politics into clinical work, supervision, and teaching.