Harper's Magazine June 2025

In the Final Analysis Maggie Doherty’s article about the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) [“The Social Turn,” Report, April] correctly identifies our organization at an inflection point. That Doherty was able to benefit from her own time in psychoanalysis is not surprising: psychoanalytic therapy has proven more effective than other treatments for long-standing problems and relationship difficulties, and it engenders more long-lasting change. Doherty draws attention to the challenges that people in various industries—not just psychoanalysts—are facing amid a tide of institutional change. However, her critique of our internal tensions without acknowledgment of their transformative value paints an incomplete picture. Yes, there are differences within APsA on sociopolitical issues. And yes, we have not addressed them perfectly. However, as Doherty reports, APsA supported the Holmes Commission’s first-ever review of racial issues…

On Saturday, December 10, 1853, as the January issue of Harper’s Magazine was being printed, a plumber repairing some water pipes in the pressroom lit his lamp and tossed the kindling into what he took to be a pan of water, but was in fact camphene, a flammable liquid used for cleaning press rollers. The resulting fire destroyed the entire Harper & Brothers compound—a collection of five-story buildings in downtown Manhattan. Though miraculously no one was killed, and only one person seriously injured, not much else was spared. The operations for typesetting and electrotyping; for presswork, drying, folding, stitching, and binding; for storage, sales, and delivery; the editorial offices—all gone. Also among the casualties were all copies of the January issue, as well as the writers’ manuscripts. Total damages were…

[Essay] LIBERAL BIAS By Kevin M. Schultz, from Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals), which was published last month by the University of Chicago Press. In February 1949, Bill Atwood, a young journalist for the New York Herald Tribune, took to the streets of New York City to quell a nagging query. A single word seemed to be on everyone’s lips. The Second World War had ended (Atwood had been a paratrooper), the Cold War was heating up, and lots of people in the United States seemed to be talking about how great it was to be “liberal.” The “liberal” form of government was the sweet spot between Communism and fascism, a vital center. “Liberals” were defending “the American way of life,” protecting the virtues of “the common…

By Jess Zafarris, from Useless Etymology, which will be published in October by John Murray Press. Starting in the fourteenth century, “meseems” was used sort of like the word “methinks,” but instead of “I think” it meant “it seems to me.” A very useful word, meseems. In Middle English and Early Modern English, the word “eftsoons” was used to mean “soon afterward.” The adverb “eft,” meaning “afterward,” shares a root with the modern word “after.” “After,” or “aefter” in Old English, combines this root with a comparative suffix, while “eft” simply has an adverbial -t at its end. Indeed, the word “after” originally meant “farther off” or “more away,” either in time or in physical distance, with the frequentative -ter ending implying extra distance. You’ve heard the words “forego” and…

From outgoing executive editor Jim Hicks’s essay in the Spring 2025 issue of The Massachusetts Review. Back in the spring of 2009, shortly after taking this job, I met with the Bosnian writer Semezdin Mehmedinovic. ́ I confessed to him that I had real doubts about my qualifications. He responded, “You’ll be a great editor! You have no ego at all!” I wondered if there has ever been a person with no ego. Only when I read Ruth Ozeki on the three marks of existence according to Zen teachings did I begin to get a sense of what he might have meant. As Ozeki reminds us, “no-self” is the second mark of existence. The first is “impermanence” and the third is “suffering,” and each is a consequence of the others.…

By Timmy Straw, from a work in progress. You have kissed the wig.Have stood between the window and its draperyand looked out onto the streetlike a spy at his assassin,like an assassin at his woman,like a woman at herself.You have brought your lunch up hereto the very offices of time.From that escrow dark patches fall.They have fallen “on me also.”Beneath the planks of the conceit the groundis very far.But you have kissed the wig.Have fused the starry principal.Have stood the plinth of financefrom which angels crowd and watchthe air happeninggradually to them.Your boyhood home will hanglike Absalom on airin Edom where the airstirs harmless in the sealess dunesall the unpeopled months of principal time.This all Saul sang,did sing, selah and limping there,brackish to the verycrotch and destitute. Drip drip, went…