Stephen Dames

Stephen Rex Dames is a recent graduate of Columbia University. He wrote his senior thesis on the history of British non-medical psychoanalysis, arguing that out of various labor and gender conflicts surrounding “lay analysis” in early twentieth-century Britain, certain defining aspects of the modern psychoanalytic profession were born. This thesis—entitled Lay Labour and Analytic Conflict: The Development and Character of British Non-Medical Psychoanalysis, 1893-1930—received departmental honors and the Albert Marion Elsberg Modern History Prize from the university. He is also the recipient of the 2024 APsA Undergraduate Essay Prize for his paper entitled “A Son’s Shibboleth: Freud, Fatherhood, and the Faith of Psychoanalysis,” an essay on a few discrete connections between the use of the word shibboleth in Freud’s work and the nature of the psychoanalytic profession. He currently works as an editorial intern at n+1 magazine.