Rick Froman has asked me offline some pertinent questions on the teaching of Freud in courses containing sections on psychoanalysis, and I hope Rick doesn't mind my answering them online:
>I wonder if there is a particular article or post to a list that you have written that you think would act as a good counterpoint to the coverage given to Freud in most intro psych textbooks.< The only place I’ve written a generalised critique of Freud’s writings is in my book *Seductive Mirage*. But I can recommend some articles on the website of Richard Webster, author of *Why Freud Was Wrong*. I don’t go along with all Webster’s views (in particular his attempt to identify Freud’s theories as a natural outcome of the “Judaeo-Christian tradition”). But I can certainly recommend the following web articles (some of which are chapters from *Why Freud Was Wrong*): http://www.richardwebster.net/rediscoveringtheunconscious.html http://www.richardwebster.net/freudandhysteria.html http://www.richardwebster.net/rediscoveringtheunconscious.html http://www.richardwebster.net/freudsfalsememories.html http://www.richardwebster.net/thebewilderedvisionary.html http://www.richardwebster.net/lettingoutthecartesiancat.html >Or, alternatively, something that addresses what, if any, lasting impact Freud has had on the field of psychology…< As the late president of the People’s Republic of China, Chou en Lai (or however it is spelt nowadays), said when asked whether the French revolution was a success, it’s too soon too tell. But I think it is clear that since the mid-twentieth century it has diminished considerably, is continuing to diminish, and will diminish further in the future. North Americans should keep in mind that Freudian ideas never had the massive influence on psychology (or general culture) in the UK that it had in the United States. (In particular, psychoanalytic ideas were always just one thread in British psychiatry, rather than the dominating thread that it was for a period in the States.) There are still places where Freud’s influence remains strong, most notably in France, where in the last few decades the intellectual classes have largely replaced an infatuation with Marx by one with Freud. Very little of the critical literature on Freud has been published in France, and the first major book critical of Freud that has been published there (largely devoted to reporting the writings of English language Freud scholars), *Mensonges Freudiens: Histoire d'une d¨sinformation s¨culaire*, has been greeted with outrage by some “representatives” of the French intellectual classes (notably the Lacanian Edith Roudinesco, who has publicly launched a personal attack on the author of the book, Jacques Benesteau). >…or an explanation of why Freud is given so much ink, even in modern psychology texts even though psychology has parted ways with him for some time now.< I think in part this is a legacy of the massive influence Freud had on American psychology for several decades in the second half of the twentieth century. Having covered his ideas so fully (and generally effusively) for so long, it would have been odd if there had been a *sudden* change in the last couple of decades of the century. Authors of new textbooks typically consult earlier textbooks for their information, so misinformation, or indequate material, gets recycled. Nowadays, for instance, the skeleton of Freud’s theories of psycho-sexual development are presented, generally in a perfunctory fashion. Often authors do point out that there is no serious evidence to support much of this stuff, though many cite supposed corroborations of this or that Freudian notion by psychoanalytically-based studies, such as those cited in Fisher and Greenfield’s books – which, incidentally, are generally given far too much credence by authors of College psychology texts. (See Edward Erwin’s *A Final Accounting* [MIT Press, 1996] for an extensive critique of such studies.) >Do you feel there is any justification for even historical coverage of his impact in intro psych? How should we treat Freud in Intro (when there is not a lot of time to go into great detail on that topic)?< There’s a real problem here, in that many College psychology texts have yet to catch on to the fact that much of the received history of the early days of psychoanalysis is partially, and sometimes almost entirely, false. This is hardly surprising, when pro-Freudians like the neuroscientist Mark Solms have easy access to journals like Scientific American to recycle “facts” that have been discredited decades ago by historians of psychology and psychoanalysis who researched the original historical documents. And many psychology teachers (and textbook authors) still think that Freud’s accounts of his early psychoanalytic experiences in his later writings provide an accurate account of them – which is not surprising, as they frequently make compelling reading. (Whatever his shortcomings as a clinician and a researcher, Freud’s extraordinary talents as a writer and rhetorician have never been in dispute.) This puts psychology teachers in a difficult position, because how many of them have the time to follow up the considerable amount of revisionary material published in the last three decades, even assuming they know where to look? I think it would be helpful if teachers faced with the task of presenting an introductory course on Freud consulted Frank Sulloway’s chapter 13 in his book *Freud: Biologist of the Mind*, titled “The Myth of the Hero in the Psychoanalytic Movement” [pp. 445-495], which dispels a number of popular myths about Freud’s early experiences. Unfortunately, Sulloway was still under the spell of Freud’s reputation when he published the book in 1979, and this shows in the earlier chapters, invaluable as much of the factual material is. Sulloway has since massively revised his view of Freud, and now regards him as something close to a charlatan. (See “The faults and frauds of Freud”: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1991/mar06/24360.html) If you can get hold of Sulloway’s chapter “Reassessing Freud’s case histories” in Gelfand, T. and Kerr, J. (eds.), *Freud and the History of Psychoanalysis* (1992), you will get a better idea of where Sulloway stands now on Freud. Psychology lecturers could also do worse than consult my summary of Freud’s “historical distortions” in his autobiographical writings, in *Seductive Mirage*, pp. 123-132. I should add at this point that I made a serious blunder on one item in my book, relating to “A case of paranoia” (pp. 100-110), which I have acknowledged twice at public seminars and in a contribution to the Seduction Theory website that I was invited to edit in 1998. For full details, see the final section (“Acknowledgement of Error”) in my posting at: http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/esterson2.html For an overview of the critical literature on Freud, TIPSters should read Frederick Crews’s essay (originally published in the New York Review of Books) “The Unknown Freud”, in *The Memory Wars* (F. Crews et al), 1995, pp. 31-73. (The book also includes the published replies in the massive response to this article, and Crews’s responses, pp. 75-155.) And an answer to the question “Why are we still arguing about Freud?” is given in Frank Cioffi’s superb essay of that title in F. Cioffi, *Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience* (1998), pp. 1-92. That’s about it, unless TIPSters have any further contributions to make on this matter. (And I welcome any challenges to anything I have written above.) Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=57 http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=58 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
