Freud on the acropolis - An appreciation

The relevance of Freud for the present and the future is often questioned because of the assertion that "our patients have changed," that is, that Freud's theorizing is too rooted in the past, and theoretical or technical innovation is necessitated by the contemporary problems our patients bring to us now. An appreciative reading of an underappreciated late Freud paper, "A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis," suggests that Freud's theory is more flexible and broadly applicable than Freud's critics have described. Bridging the gap between an analysis of cultural and individual ills is always problematic, but as the "Acropolis" paper shows, Freud's theory can accommodate a wide variety of cultural and historical conditions because of the emphasis on compromise between competing generational claims, no matter what the specific content of the claims themselves.