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FREUDS_GARDNER

                                                           May 14, 2002

Martin Gardner -- at least around the
time of writing "Fads & Fallacies" --
didn't regard psychoanalysis as a
pseudo-scientific cult.
                                                  FREUDIAN_PINK_SLIPS
There are some places where
he talks dismissively about                                         
"paranoia", and a compulsion       Remember, if you call someone         
to rebel against authority         "paranoid" today, you're just         
figures, which make it clear       using popular slang, but back         
that he's bought into the          in 1952, you were making a            
great secular religion of          medical diagnosis, typically          
fifties intellectuals...           an unqualified one.                   
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                        
To quote a recent issue of
"The Skeptical Inquirer":

   "Why did it take decades before            Elizabeth F. Loftus and Melvin
   critics were willing to expose             J. Guyer, "Who abused Jane Doe?
   Freud's biases in his case                 The Hazards of the Single Case
   stories-- the information he               History, Part 1", Skeptical
   left out, the distortions of               Inquirer, Volume 26, No. 3,
   what his patients really said,             May/June 2002, page 26
   his failure to consider other                
   explanations of their symptoms               
   and problems?"                        I speculate it might be a        
                                         bit of fallout from the         
They reference:                          pomo 'science wars'.  If      
                                         all of these sharp 80s             
   Cioffi 1998;                          humanists could go gonzo         
   Powell and Boer 1995;                 crazy over a dubious            
   Sulloway 1992;                        doctrine, maybe it was         
   Webster 1995                          worth examining some of         
                                         the other doctrines from 
                                         the past.                

                                                       
                                                       (Nov 23, 2013)
                                         Alternately: a Freud-backlash 
                                         could begin as an attempt at 
                                         distinguishing rigorously   
                                         between science and scientism,
                                         in which case we might owe the
                                         pomo 'science wars' a bit of 
                                         thanks.  

         
         THE_FREUD_SYNDROME.html




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