Applied Psychoanalysis

In the early days of the development of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, Freud took particular notice of the plays of Sophocles and Shakespeare's Hamlet. This was largely in support of his description of the Oedipal phase of human development.

Later, he and many psychoanalysts, as well as many non-analysts, utilized the concepts relating to the impact of a dynamic unconscious and the effects of early life experiences as a lens through which to enlarge our understanding of a variety of cultural phenomena. Accordingly, philosophy, psychology, history, anthropology, as well as other disciplines were studied. Similarly, some writers of fiction used psychoanalytic concepts to characterize their characters. It is interesting to note, as did Freud, that some writers did so quite unconsciously, as did Schnitzler, Stendhal and Proust. Unfortunately, although many of these works provided readers with valuable contributions, some were formulaic and scanted the overdetermined world surrounding their subjects.

As the author of the following essays, I trust I have generally avoided the pitfalls of such constricting views.

David S. Werman was born in NYC in 1922. After serving in WWII, he earned a BA from Queens College and went on to receive his MD at the l'Université de Lausanne in Switzerland. He worked as an obstetrician and gynecologist, and in 1970, changed specialties, settling in at the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University where he taught and practiced psychoanalysis until his retirement in 1992. His professional accomplishments were recognized when he was inducted as a Fellow into the American College of Psychoanalysts. Werman returned to his native New York in 1998, where he lived until his death in 2014. Werman's life-long love of art led him, perhaps inevitably, to the work of James Ensor. Ensor's visions are filled with meaning and double-meaning, fantasy and fear, irresistible for a man who was an MD, a psychoanalyst, a musician, and a lover of art.