“Wild” Psychoanalysis as a Therapeutic Approach in 1960s Iran: A View from a Translator’s Commentary

This essay is a critical reading of a preface by an Iranian translator, Mahmud Nava’i, to his translation of a Freudian text. Drawing on the idea of “wild” analysis defined by Freud in 1910 as inappropriate psychoanalysis, the paper attempts to compare Freud’s idea to the translator’s commentary on Freudian psychoanalysis. It demonstrates how an inquisitive, if not erroneous, interpretation of psychoanalysis could result in an embodiment of wild analysis in Iran. Although psychoanalysis was not embraced in Iran as a psychotherapeutic method in the 1960s, such understandings of the method could play into the hands of the detractors of Freud, both in religious and Leftist quarters, who took Freudianism as a threat to Muslim morals and Marxist outlooks, respectively. Also, translating Freud’s theories into the Persian language cannot constitute an essential element in psychotherapy because this type of therapy cannot be learned from books, per Freud’s account of the ‘wild’ psychoanalysis.