This Fall semester I have been concurrently enrolled in the CUNY Graduate Center and the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity (IPSS). Each institution has provided unique learning experiences and it has been an interesting process trying to integrate knowledge from two different fields. Specifically, I have attempted to combine the data visualization skills obtained through my CUNY course with the psychoanalytic theory taught at IPSS. Toward that end, my goal for this project was to visualize the “Freudian Legacy” through exploring the lifespans and work of major psychoanalytic theorists. In doing so, I hoped to provide another method of understanding the overall development of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory. This resulted in the following research questions:
- What were the lifespans of the “major” psychoanalytic theorists? Do their lifespans overlap? (Were they potentially contributing to psychoanalytic theory at the same time?)
- Which theory or “branch” of psychoanalysis is associated with each theorist?
- What are the total number of publications for each theorist?
I decided to utilize the assigned IPSS textbook, Freud and Beyond: A history of modern psychoanalytic thought, as an initial reference point and data source. This allowed me to draw upon the authors’ expertise in identifying “major” theorists/theories and establishing lifespans. I considered creating a visualization depicting the total amount of pages dedicated to each theorist contained within the text in effort to better understand how this specific text has influenced my understanding of psychoanalytic theory. However, after discussing my proposal with the course instructor, Dr. Michelle McSweeney, she suggested that doing so might produce an overly narrow project. Based on her feedback, I decided to expand the project to include a visualization derived from the total number of publications by each theorist listed on Wikipedia. Accordingly, while I was originally hoping to understand how my IPSS assigned text has shaped my current understanding of psychoanalytic theory, through expanding the project to include additional data sources I am able to provide a more comprehensive exploration of the research questions and a more compelling story. Moreover, it provides further evidence of the fact that data visualization is often an iterative process which needs to be adjusted based on feedback, available data, and overall purpose of the project.
The first visualization is a Gantt Chart (type of bar chart) depicting the lifespans of each of the major theorists. I believe the use of a Gantt Chart visualizes the data in a manner that is simple, easy to interpret, and engaging. Furthermore, it allows for multiple lifespans to be represented and effectively illustrates when the lifespans overlapped. Based on the overlapping lifespans, it appears as if many of the major theorists were alive at the same time which suggests that they were most likely influenced by each other’s work. Another advantage of the Gantt Chart is that I was able to include another variable and easily represent “gender.” I feel as if the colors highlight the fact that the overwhelming majority of psychoanalytic theorists have been male, and that the field of psychoanalysis has failed to include the perspective and experiences of women (or other gender identities). While contemporary psychoanalytic theory has begun to address these mistakes, the visualization clearly demonstrates that psychoanalysis has been dominated by men.
The second visualization is a scatterplot that identifies which theory or “branch” of psychoanalysis is most commonly associated with each theorist. Since there are multiple different psychoanalytic theories and theorists, a visualization that identifies the link between theory and theorist seemed both useful and practical. Moreover, the sorting feature allowed me to visualize a timeline of noteworthy publications. In doing so, the visualization story transitions from simply representing overlapping lifespans to also depicting overlapping publications that have contributed to the development of psychoanalytic theory. Finally, the tooltips function provided an opportunity to include the name and date of the noteworthy publication alongside the name of the major theorist.
The third visualization is a treemap representing the total amount of publications listed on Wikipedia for each theorist. It should be noted, that while each theorist included in the project had a dedicated Wikipedia page, it often did not include a complete list of their publications. However, since Wikipedia is often a “first line” method of “research” I thought it would be interesting to visualize the resulting data. I chose a treemap because it presents data in a simple and relatively intuitive manner. The label function allowed me add the name of each theorist as well as the total number of publications listed on Wikipedia. Finally, Tableau automatically sizes the treemap based total number of publications which further simplifies the interpretation.
There are a number of limitations to this project. First, the data was primarily grounded in one data source which may have limited the resulting visualizations. Specifically, which theorists are considered “major” and their associated “branch” of psychoanalysis was decided by the textbook authors. While they are both considered to be “experts” in the field of psychoanalysis, it remains possible that other important theorists were excluded. This is especially noteworthy when considered the lack of female representation within the field of psychoanalysis, and also points toward other aspects of identity that might have further prevented additional theorists from being recognized. Second, while lifespans were used to create the Gantt Chart, it might have been more useful to depict “active years,” or years when each of the theorists were actively practicing, publishing, and contributing to the development of psychoanalytic theory. Freud was a prolific writer, but he certainly was not publishing psychoanalytic works during his childhood. Thus, a Gantt Chart centered on “active years” might provide a more accurate representation of how psychoanalytic theory developed. Third, a significant limitation to the project is the fact that the treemap visualization relied on incomplete data. The full list of publications associated with each theorist was not available on Wikipedia which strongly suggests that the treemap is not an accurate depiction of publication history. Additionally, when considering publications, I relied on my own experience to determine which publication should be considered “noteworthy.” Indeed, it is likely that another individual would disagree with my assessment of what is to be considered a “noteworthy” publication.
Future visualizations would be enhanced by expanding and refining the data source. Utilizing additional psychoanalytic materials to identify “major” theorists and their accompanying theories would provide a more complete understanding of the development of psychanalytic theory. In addition, it would also provide an opportunity to examine the contributions of theorists who might have been excluded or ignored due to various reasons, i.e. identify variables. Future projects would also benefit from determining an accurate count of published works by each theorist included in the project. Consequently, utilizing publication history to create a Gaant Chart would perhaps better represent “active years” and therefore provide a better perspective of how each theorist may have influenced one another. Finally, it may be useful to include “key concepts” developed by each theorist as part of the tooltips for the visualization that paired each theorist with their respective theory.
