New Sincerity and the legacy of psychoanalysis: Benjamin Kunkel’s <italic>Indecision</italic> (2005) and Heidi Julavits’s <italic>The Uses of Enchantment</italic> (2006).

This essay examines how and why psychoanalysis becomes a flashpoint in current debates about sincerity and “post-ironic” reading practices. It argues that the authors’ disagreement about Freud’s legacy—Kunkel sees the analytic session as a liberal contract, while Julavits sees it as a scene of power—signals conflicting sensibilities about the role of suspicion in intellectual life. These conflicting sensibilities have divided <italic>n + 1</italic> and <italic>The Believer</italic> (founded by Kunkel and Julavits, respectively) since their inauguration, and they represent a larger feud among progressive intellectuals about how we should read and relate to others. Most agree that irony is outmoded, but what does a post-ironic ethos looks like? What does it mean to be serious? What is the best way to take something (or someone) seriously? This essay advances Kunkel’s notion that suspicion is not necessarily opposed to sincerity, and it likewise argues that sincerity is methodological, rather than characterological. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]