The current issue of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East incluces a new article by Kutluğhan Soyubol on psychoanalysis in Turkey:
Turkey Psychoanalyzed, Psychoanalysis Turkified: The Case of İzzettin Şadan
Abstract: “Considering translation as a convoluted process of transformation between different cultures, this article scrutinizes the work of İzzettin Şadan, the initiator of psychoanalysis in Turkey. Through translations of the works of Western psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, and others, Şadan attempted to produce a Turkish psychoanalytic canon. This canon nonetheless was bound to be different in form as it filtered through the cultural and socio-political structures of the early Turkish Republic. The article argues that Şadanian psychoanalysis accordingly engendered novel psychoanalytic meanings and conceptualizations. It also emerged to represent symbolically a resistance to, if not a break from, some features of Western (Freudian) psychoanalytic discourse, including those that relate to society and civilization. In sum, through a close reading of Şadan’s writings, the article demonstrates how the translation of psychoanalysis into Turkish involved in the process its reconfiguration to accommodate the cultural and sociohistorical conditions of the early Turkish Republic.”
h-madness 