Stephen Black wrote: > An offbeat alternative or supplement to Hall's book worth considering > is Appignanesi's and Zarate's (1979) _Freud for Beginners_, if it's > still in print. It's Freud in cartoons, along the lines of Larry > Gonick's books. If you've seen them, you'll know what I mean.
Chris Green added: >There were two different "X for Beginners" series. They both had one > on Freud. Eventually one of them changed to "Introducing X." The > Appignanesi & Zarate version is the one that changed. It is available > through Amazon.com but, it appears, only in used copies. I draw the line at these two "cartoon" versions of Freud's career and psychoanalytic developments thereof. They both follow just about every discredited traditional story of Freud's clinical experiences, and treat several highly dubious claims as historical fact. Here are some of the grossly misleading reports in the Richard Appignanesi version in *Introducing Freud*: 1. Ernst Brucke, the professor in charge of Freud's university research in 1882, is quoted as saying: "Academic posts are few and badly paid. Your chances of advancement as a Jew are bad." The anti-semitism bit is an invention. Neither Freud, in his "Autobiographical Study", nor Ernest Jones in his biography, report anti-Semitism as a factor in Freud's decision to go into private practice. Brucke advised him to do so because his prospects for advancement in the department were restricted as the potential posts were filled by people unlikely to move on in the foreseeable future. Freud needed financial security as he was desperate to marry Martha Bernays, to whom he had been engaged for about four years. 2. The long discredited story of Freud's experience on reading a paper on male hysteria on his return from Paris in 1886 is recycled with all the trappings of Freud's later account that, as Ellenberger documented in 1970, was the complete opposite of what actually happened. 3. The fairy-tale version of the case of "Anna O." is presented, e.g.: "Each symptom disappeared when traced back to its first occasion." 4. The phoney story of Anna O.'s phantom pregnancy is recycled right down to every discredited detail. 5. The discredited traditional story of the seduction theory episode is recycled: Freud's clinical methodology facilitated the recall of childhood memories, and the patients' "repressed memories nearly always revealed seduction or sexual molestation by a parent or adult." 6. The discredited story of Freud's supposed recalling seeing his mother naked on a train to Leipzig when he was an infant is recycled. 7. The authors describe Freud's theory that "all dreams represent the fulfilment of wishes" as a "discovery". 8. Freud is credited with the "discovery" of the Unconscious. 9. Freud's infantile psychosexual stages are presented as facts. 10. A credulous account of the Little Hans case history is presented, ending with the words "Hans grew up normally" (with the clear implication that the boy's horse phobia was cured by the treatment). 11. All the nonsense about male infants' castration anxiety and female infants' penis envy is presented as fact. 12. Freud's conceit that he was responsible for the "third great revolution" in human thought (after Copernicus and Darwin) is presented as fact. 13. The story of the Rat Man is reported just as Freud told it, right down to the false assertion that the patient's "neurosis was completely cleared". (That this was not the case we know from letters Freud wrote to Jung in the period following the end of the treatment. This is the case history in which Patrick Mahony revealed confabulation and exaggerated claims of therapeutic efficacy.) 14. How about this for sycophantic credulity: "It is sometimes said that these splits [with Adler, Stekel, Jung, Rank, etc] were caused by Freud's tyrannical and dogmatic personality." Perish the thought! According to Richard Appignanesi: "But as Freud told his biographer Ernest Jones: 'It's not my personality�But my ideas about sexuality and the unconscious they don't like'." (Accompanying pictures show Freud being stabbed in the back.) Here Appignanesi is illustrating the truth of the adage "There's one born every minute." Time to stop before this gets too long. Frankly, as an introduction to Freudian ideas this is a travesty of what should be recommended to College students by psychology teachers. I note that the book's cover states that it is "The International Bestseller". So much for the idea that the traditional mythological stories about Freud are no longer in circulation to any great extent. On the contrary, they are alive and well and still being widely disseminated in books such as this one. 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 http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/infc/1_gesamt_en.html --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
