In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam and the Purpose of American Psychology
  • James W. Reed
George Prochnik . Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam and the Purpose of American Psychology. New York: Other Press, 2006. viii + 471 pp. Ill. $29.95 (ISBN-10: 1-59051-182-4, ISBN-13: 978-1-59051-182-4).

Freud's 1909 visit to the United States is a salient moment in the canon of twentieth century intellectual history. Many of us with strong interests in the history of medicine might resist appeals to read another narrative about Freud and the Americans of more than four hundred pages by an author who is not a professional historian and who, as the great-grandson of George Jackson Putnam—the most important American medical man to embrace psychoanalysis—had privileged access to Putnam family correspondence. Resistance to this long read might be increased by knowledge that Putnam Camp is in large part traditional comparative biography, long on detail and general cultural context and without the critical claims that often give new life to old subjects. Putnam Camp is, however, an original contribution that deserves inclusion in short lists of best books on the history of psychoanalysis. Why?

The story of Freud's journey to Clark University and his interaction with William James and other leaders of the New England academic elite has become so familiar that much of the contingency surrounding the event has been lost to the illusion of familiarity that often envelopes canonical events. Prochnik reminds his readers that Freud initially turned down the invitation from G. Stanley Hall. Freud was not crucial to Hall's plan for the intellectual festival he organized to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his university, and James and Putnam did not plan to attend until the last moment. Nevertheless, Freud's lectures at Clark left Putnam excited by the promise of psychoanalysis and led to an invitation for Freud to visit Putnam at the Adirondack camp that provided a like-minded group of Boston patricians with opportunities for recreation and communion with nature. [End Page 474]

The journey to Camp Putnam proved arduous for both Freud and Putnam, but during the long day they managed to spend time together, apart from the frenetic activity of other campers, and developed the mutual understanding that would sustain their intellectual friendship despite challenging differences in temperament and social values. Prochnik is at his best in his fresh account of the intellectual dialectic between the American idealist and his Old World mentor and demonstrates the remarkable role played by Susan Blow in Putnam's attempt to tame Freud's vision for service to America. Blow, the Progressive advocate of kindergartens, was Putnam's patient but became his closest intellectual friend and provided Putnam with Hegelian rebuttals to Freud's materialism. Although crucial philosophical differences were beyond resolution, Putnam gained insight into his own sexual suffering from psychoanalysis and remained confident that knowledge of the unconscious and the irrational could be put to constructive purpose. Putnam served as Freud's American champion despite intense disagreements and helped forge the consensus among American medical leaders that accelerated the rise of dynamic psychology in the United States.

Prochnik's account of this intellectual collaboration includes fresh portraits of both Putnam and Freud. He carefully delineates their mutual debts as well as the antagonisms that they struggled to manage. In Prochnik's work, Freud and Putnam remain great clinicians who bravely sought insight into human suffering wherever they needed to venture, but they become more human as their personal needs and contradictory behaviors are taken into account. Prochnik's Camp Putnum joins Peter D. Kramer's Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind (2006) as a postrevisionist work of critical synthesis and advances our understanding of the principal characters in the rise of dynamic psychology and their attempts to advance knowledge of the role of the irrational in human affairs.

James W. Reed
Rutgers University
...

pdf

Share