Britain on the couch: The popularization of psychoanalysis in Britain 1918-1940

Despite the enormous historical attention psychoanalysis has attracted, its popularization in Britain las opposed to the United States) in the wake of the Great War has been largely overlooked. The present paper explores the sources and fate of the sudden "craze" for psychoanalysis after 1918, exami ning the content of the books through which the doctrine became widely know n, along with the roles played by religious interests and the popular press . The percolation of Freudian and related language into everyday English wa s effectively complete by the 1930s. Crucially, it is argued that in Britai n the character of psychoanalytic theory itself demonstrably converged with the psychological needs of the British population in the postwar period. T he situation in Britain was clearly different in many respects from that in the United States. This episode bears on numerous questions about scientif ic popularization, the distinctiveness of British psychoanalysis, and thoug h it is treated here only peripherally the epistemological status or nature of psychoanalysis. More generally the present paper may be read as an exer cise in reflexive disciplinary historiography, in which the levels of disci pline ("Psychology") and subject matter ("psychology") are viewed as interp enetrating and mutually constitutive.