Psychoanalysts on the Left and the Far Left

Jonathan Brent, Arnold Richards, and Nathan Szajnberg discussed the cohort of psychoanalysts in the United States who belonged to the Communist Party in the 1930s and 1940s, and their impact on both clinical practice and theory. 

About the Participants

Jonathan Brent is the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. From 1991 to 2009 he was Editorial Director and Associate Director of Yale Press. He is the founder of the world acclaimed Annals of Communism series, which he established at Yale Press in 1991. Brent is the co-author of Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 (Harper-Collins, 2003) and Inside the Stalin Archives (Atlas Books, 2008). He is now working on a biography of the Soviet-Jewish writer Isaac Babel. Brent teaches history and literature at Bard College.

Nathan Szajnberg, M.D., is Managing Editor on InternationalPsychoanalysis.net. Formerly the Sigmund Freud Professor of Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University, Dr. Szajnberg is Visiting Professor at Columbia University and a member of both NYPSI and APM (Columbia Psychoanalytic), as well as a training analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. He has been the Wallerstein Research Fellow in Psychoanalysis since 2005. He studied at the University of Chicago and completed his analytic training at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute. He has completed three books: Educating the Emotions: Bruno Bettelheim and Psychoanalysis; Lives Across Time (a 30-year follow-up of Brody’s infants); Reluctant Warriors: Israelis Suspended between Rome and Jerusalem. He is currently writing a book on Ethiopian/Israeli children’s identity and development.

Dr. Arnold Richards is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and is on the faculty of the NYU and Mount Sinai Medical Schools, Departments of Psychiatry. He is a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and received its Distinguished Contributor award in 2004. He is a member of the American Psychological Association, Division 39, Section 10, the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the New York Freudian Society, the Psychoanalytic Association of New York the Western New York Psychoanalytic Society, the Lake Oscawana Psychoanalytic Society and Honorary Member of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis/Karen Horney Clinic and the New Jersey Psychoanalytic Society. Dr Richards was Editor of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA) from 1994 to 2003 and before that he was an editor of TAP. He received the Mary S. Sigourney Trust Honorary Award in 2000 for outstanding contributions to psychoanalysis.