The publication in English of Serge Moscovici's Psychoanalysis, Its Image and Its Public is an event of singular importance for social psychology. For the first time, English-speaking readers will have access to one of the most influential books published in the discipline in the past 30 years.
Moscovici's development of the theory of social representations has long been recognised as a major contribution to social psychology, but discussion of the theory has been limited been by the unavailability in English of the text in which he provides his most extensive presentation of the theory and demonstrates its fecundity through his empirical study of representations of psychoanalysis in France. Psychoanalysis is in many ways the founding text of the theory of social representations and is, as such, a modern classic. As well as tracing the ways in which knowledge of psychoanalysis is transformed as it is reconstructed by different social groups in French society, Moscovici provides an extensive analysis of the representations of psychoanalysis within the mass media, showing how different interests structure such communication through the different forms of propaganda, propagation and diffusion.
This book will be an indispensable text for students and scholars of social psychology. It will also be of interest to psychologists, sociologists and cultural theorists concerned with mass communication, and to all those with an interest in current perspectives in the social sciences.

This fascinating book makes an important contribution to the history of the social sciences. It tells the largely hidden story of how social psychology became an international social science, vividly documenting the micro-politics of a virtually forgotten committee, the Committee on Transnational Social Psychology, whose work took place against the back-drop of some of the most momentous events of the twentieth century. Overcoming intellectual, institutional and political obstacles, including the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the military coups in Chile or Argentine, the committee struggled to bring social psychology to global recognition, not as part of a programme of intellectual imperialism, but motivated by a mixture of intellectual philanthropy and self-interest. Few authors could tell this unique story. Serge Moscovici is undoubtedly the best-placed insider to do so, together with Ivana Markova providing a lucid, erudite and carefully documented account of the work of this remarkable group.

This book will be an essential resource for any scholar interested in the history of social psychology, as well as upper-level students studying the history of the social sciences.

Serge Moscovici It has recently become commonplace to say that science and its history are one. Nonetheless, in practice things have not changed much. We still behave as ifthe two were not really connected. Or else as if it were hard, not to say impossible, to link them in a single enquiry. In such circumstances the group we constitute and which has undertaken the task of studying the history of social psychology while refor mulating its theories represents an experiment. Whether the experiment succeeds or fails, the three aims we have set ourselves are precise: First, we wish to bring up to date the relation between certain topics of psycho logical research and their historical context. Second, we will include within the discussion itself and consider critically some authors and works that have become our classics due to their undiminished signifi cance and heuristic power. But, in this respect, we also consider that we should depart from the attitude of the physical sciences shared by so many psychologists that past acquisitions have nothing to offer as a basis for research. Only those scholars who have said their say and completed their task indulge in such medita tions; therefore work undertaken in this field is unimportant and even illicit. We, on the other hand, are convinced that social psychology is, after all, a social science and that a study based on orthodox theories is still eminently significant."

Serge Moscovici first introduced the concept of social representations into contemporary social psychology nearly forty years ago. Since then the theory has become one of the predominant approaches in social psychology, not only in continental Europe, but increasingly in the Anglo--Saxon world as well. While Moscovicia s work has spread broadly across the discipline, notably through his contributions to the study of minority influences and of the psychology of crowds, the study of social representations has continued to provide the central focus for one of the most distinctive and original voices in social psychology today. This volume brings together some of Moscovicia s classic statements of the theory of social representations, as well as elaborations of the distinctive features of this perspective in social psychology. In addition the book includes some recent essays in which he re--examines the intellectual history of social representations, exploring the diverse ways in which this theory has responded to a tradition of thought in the social sciences which encompasses not only the contributions of Durkheim and Piaget, but also those of Levy--Bruhl and Vygotsky. The final chapter of the book consists of a long interview with Ivana Markova, in which Moscovici not only reviews his own intellectual itinerary but also gives his views on some of the key questions facing social psychology today. The publication of this volume provides an essential source for the study of social representations and for an assessment of the work of a social psychologist who has consistently sought to re--establish the discipline as a vital element of the social sciences.