SOURCE: Seabrook, John. “Psychoanalysis: A Telling Critique.” Christian Science Monitor 76, no. 168 (24 July 1984): 21-2.

In the following review, Seabrook characterizes In the Freud Archives as a captivating examination of psychoanalysis and an insightful look at the tenets and practices of analysts who follow Freud's teachings.

In the Freud Archives is Janet Malcolm's second book about Freudian psychoanalysis. In her previous book, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, Malcolm recalled the heyday of the discipline, the 1950s, when with unlimited optimism analysis reached out to every kind of human disorder. In the 1960s government-funded clinics made analysis accessible to almost everyone, and analysts talked about improving the health of society as a whole.

But in the '70s both the money and the optimism ran out. Today analysts acknowledge that at least as many treatments fail as succeed, and success has been more modestly defined. Most analysts won't treat the severely ill...