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THE_ANTI_FREUD_CREW
December 30, 2017
Frederick C. Crews has been fighting the
good fight against the Freudians
for some decades.
I was just reviewing some of this material,
and I see that I could be oversimplifying
the story of the rise and fall of Freud.
THE_FREUD_SYNDROME
For one thing, there were some serious
criticisms of Freud published earlier
than I realized-- I had the impression FREUDS_GARDNER
that this had to wait until the 1990s,
but actually there was quite a bit of
such work in the 1950s-- it just didn't
seem to sink into the mass consciousness. The 1950s were essentially
the Freud Decade in the
Another difficulty: the Freudian forces United States.
had a lock on many of the sources of
information-- Anna Freud was guarding
Freud's legacy, releasing only sanitized
versions of his correspondence. Some I'd had the impression that
key material wasn't published in full that the long period of
until 1985 or so. relative acquiescence to
the Freudians was more of
an unwillingness to see the
Interestingly, the Freudian obvious-- some of it was
apologists still haven't the result of active jamming,
given up, and Crews is still there was a faction that didn't
fighting it out with them, want you to see the evidence.
notably in the pages of
"The New York Review of Books".
Though also in his own books on the
subject, such as the recent
"Freud: The Making of an Illusion".
The stuff that the apologists come
up with is remarkably, transparently bad.
A piece in the "London Review of Books" [ref]
appears to be trying to make the point Paul Keegan, "From
that you can't do a biography of Freud Shtetl to Boulevard"
because Freud did not approve of LRB vol. 39 No. 19,
biography because of it's tendency to October 5, 2017
select facts to fit a coherent
narrative... but if one is not a CIRCULAR_FREUD
Freudian already, one does not actually
care whether Freud would've approved
of a project, so...
A common dodge is to point out
how in glowing terms just how A particularly odd one is Lisa
influential Freud was, but Appignanesi who seems to want
the actual question is whether to say both that there's no
the influence was justified. point in complaining about
Freud because he wasn't all that
Another common dodge is to influential, and that complaining
point out that whatever about Freud is ignorant because
Freud's errors, he said many he was so influential.
interesting and insightful
things that justify our own
interest in him, which would
work fine if he was regarded
as a philosopher, the trouble APPY_POLY_OGGIES
is he claimed to be a
scientist with clinical proof
of his ideas.
Another move is the "nobody's perfect"
line-- "Newton was into alchemy!"
But the thing is, Newton did not
use alchemy as support for his work
in physics and mathematics.
And unlike Freudian psychology,
Newtonian physics actually works.
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