Towards the Files. Psychoanalysis and Its Publishing House Strategies

摘要

Towards the Files. Psychoanalysis and Its Publishing House Strategies. The following case study deals with the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, founded 1919 in Vienna by a group around Sigmund Freud and shut down in 1938 by the Gestapo. During that time the Verlag published the titles of the contemporary psychoanalytic movement, including the first pychoanalytic dictionary, the Almanach as a yearbook, the four authoritative journals, as well as the first complete edition of Freud's writings. A single publishing house became thus responsible for the appearance of an entire theory - a unique situation without historical comparison. My thesis here is that the Verlag initiated certain strategies of publicising (e.g. centralising the movement, enforcing the company's name, labelling its activities) that were, prior to arguments and contents, constitutive for development of psychoanalysis as well as its implementation within the field of science. Consequently, these strategies cannot be found through interpretations of psychoanalytical texts, but in the genuine files and in view of the material products (books, journals, blurbs, advertisements etc.) that were passed down from the Verlag. As an opening step, this essay explores several of those Viennese files, showing that the Verlag not only struggled with monetary and personal problems but rather and foremost launched branding, marketing and public relation campaigns as key concepts to make sciences and its articular knowledge acceptable. As a result the Verlag changed from a commercial and distributive institution to an epistemic medium.