Apologies for adding one final comment to my recent postings on Freud (and no doubt boring the pants off many people in the process). I'm doing so because those of us who have published in this vein in recent times have frequently been denounced as "Freud-bashers", merely intent for (malicious? unconscious?) reasons of our own to cut Freud down to size. (People who use this expression, by the way, rarely show any indication that they have actually read the writings in question, as against commentaries on those writings.) So here's my last piece of Freud-bashing on the topic in question.
On 13 May I contrasted what Freud wrote about the seduction theory episode in 1914 with what he had written in 1906. I should have pointed out that to Fliess in late 1897 he wrote explicitly that he had lost faith in his 1896 claim to have uncovered repressed memories of sexual molestations in infancy in his patients in 1895-1896. Yet in his belated first intimation in 1906 that he had abandoned the *theory* he asserted without qualification that "by chance" (a brilliant touch by the master) a disproportionate number of those patients had been sexually abused in infancy � something he no longer believed! He obviously had an intuitive sense that if you brazenly make a false assertion in categorical terms you are likely to convince your readers (something he had learned on a smaller scale in relation to his cocaine debacle in the 1880s). My sense is that this is because the reader (assuming he or she even reflects on the assertion) automatically feels that no one would assert something in such categorical terms unless it was a simple statement of fact, certainly not in a professional journal. Why did he lie about what he really believed, when his eventual aim was to get across the notion that what he had actually uncovered were unconscious phantasies (ie, what was to become his "great discovery" of infantile phantasy life, as in his 1914 and 1925 accounts of the episode)? Because he had to find a way of implicitly acknowledging to his colleagues his abandonment of the seduction theory without admitting the full measure of his climbdown from the "source of the Nile" claim of 1896 (which, incidentally, he didn't actually mention in his 1906 article). By breaking this acknowledgement down in stages over the years he was able to turn a debacle into a triumph, an epoch-making discovery of truth from error, which is precisely how commentators later presented the episode to the public. What is most astonishing to those of us who have seen the full measure of Freud's intellectual dishonesty (combined with an extraordinary capacity for self-deception) is that, by subtle self-promotion, he managed to convince the vast majority of writers and commentators that he was a man of supreme integrity, a judgement frequently advanced by supposedly well-informed people in the twentieth century. Sometimes he takes my breath away by the sheer audacity of his rhetoric, as with the masterly interpolation "by chance" to suggest authenticity in the above instance when in actual fact it had been *he himself* who had tendentiously inferred the *preconceived* unconscious infantile "sexual scenes" using his dubious analytic technique! Enough already! Allen Esterson -------------------------------- >Fri, 13 May 2005 14:50:23 -0400 >Author: "Allen Esterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Re: Was Freud a scientist? > An afterthought to the quotation from Glymour in my previous posting. > Freud himself provided an explanation for why he chose not, in Glymour's > words, "to think critically, rigorously, honestly, and publicly about the > reliability of his methods" after 1897. Here is what Freud wrote in "On > the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement": > > "Analysis had led back to these infantile sexual traumas by the right > path, and yet they were not true. The firm ground of reality was gone. At > that time I would gladly have given up the whole work, as my esteemed > predecessor, Breuer, had done when he made his unwelcome discovery. > Perhaps I persevered only because I no longer had any choice and could not > then [in his early forties] begin again at anything else." (1914, SE 14, > p. 17) > > The uninformed reader (i.e., most people reading this passage) will be > unaware of the incidental anomalies it contains. Here he writes that the > "infantile sexual traumas" he claimed to have uncovered in 1896 "were not > true" -- period. The last time he had written about the episode, in 1906, > he had stated something very different: "At that time my material was > still scanty, and it happened by chance to include a disproportionately > large number of cases in which sexual seduction by an adult or by older > children played the chief part in the history of the patient's childhood. > I thus overestimated the frequency of such events (though in other > respects they were not open to doubt)." The skilfully crafted > disingenuousness of these sentences, and indeed of the whole paragraph > from which it comes, is explored in my article "The mythologizing of > psychoanalytic history: deception and self-deception in Freud's accounts > of the seduction theory episode" (2001), in the section headed > "Extrication from potential disaster", pp. 335-339. It was not just, as > Glymour writes, that Freud refused to face up to the lessons he should > have drawn from the collapse of his seduction theory. He extricated > himself from the debacle by deliberately misrepresenting what he had > claimed earlier (in Borch-Jacobsen's words, by telling "fibs"). See my > 2001 article for a documented demonstration of my contention. > > Buried in the above quotation is another of Freud's "fibs" (or, if you > prefer, in this case an analytic "reconstruction" masquerading as > historical fact), plus a discreditable aspersion about Breuer. The > "unwelcome discovery" by Freud's "esteemed colleague" Josef Breuer had > been subtly alluded to a few pages earlier. In relation to the "Anna O." > treatment Freud wrote: "Now I have strong reasons for suspecting that > after all her symptoms had been relieved Breuer must have discovered from > further indications the sexual motivation of this transference, but that > the universal nature of this unexpected phenomenon escaped him, with the > result that, as though confronted by an 'untoward event' [English in > original], he broke off all further investigation." > > Let's leave aside the fib that Anna O. was relieved of all her symptoms, > and just note that what Freud means here by the "untoward event" is his > belated reconstruction of a scene with the patient writhing in the throes > of a phantom pregnancy. Ellenberger and Hirschmuller have documented that > there is no evidence whatsoever that such an event ever occurred, and in > any case there is a letter Freud wrote to Stefan Zweig in 1932 in which he > explicitly states that he "guessed" the scene, and that it was a > "reconstruction". He couldn't publish his hinted "untoward event" > explicitly while Breuer was still alive, but the invented story was common > knowledge in Freud's inner circle, and was later presented by his > disciples, and credulously accepted by commentators, as historical fact. > Why did he do it? Because Breuer had stated in his case history that > sexuality did not enter into the case, and that was anathema to Freud � it > would have contradicted his contention that sexual matters lie at the root > of every neurosis. So he passed around the "reconstructed" phantom > pregnancy story, and hinted at it in both his "History" and his > "Autobiographical Study". Never mind that if sexuality hadn't been > explored (as it wasn't) in Breuer's treatment it would mean there was a > contradiction with the other claim Freud repeatedly made, that Anna O. had > been "restored to health" by Breuer: On Freud theories, only if the sexual > origins of the problem are brought out and resolved can there be a "cure". > Freud's writings are replete with such anomalies, but such is the > brilliance of his writing, and his mastery of rhetoric, these have largely > eluded most readers until recent times and the "new wave" of Freud > criticism inaugurated by Cioffi's 1974 article "Was Freud a Liar?" and > Ellenberger's chapter on Freud in his 1970 volume *The Discovery of the > Unconscious* (plus his finding original papers pertaining to the Anna O. > case). And just to set the record straight after its tendentious mangling > by Freud, Breuer did not "break off all further investigation" as the > result of an "untoward event". He organised the patient's orderly transfer > to a sanatorium, and it took place shortly after he terminated the > treatment. > > Refererence > > Esterson, A. (2001). "The mythologizing of psychoanalytic history: > deception and self-deception in Freud's accounts of the seduction theory > episode." History of Psychiatry, xii, pp. 329-352. > > Allen E. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
