In the context of claim cited by Chris of the 'confirmation' of Freud's theory of hysterical conversion, here are a few comments on his application of the theory in relation to his explanation for the supposedly "hysterical" intestinal disorders (produced by 'conversion') experienced by his most famous patient, the Wolf Man. No short account can do justice to the extraordinary flights of fancy that constitute Freud's explanation for this (Freud, 1917, SE 17, pp. 74-84, 113-114). A brief summing up of the situation in relation to the bowel disorder (chronic constipation) will have to suffice:
"It must be regarded as a true hysteria showing...phenomena of conversion. A portion of the homosexual impulse [the infant Wolf Man's libidinal desire for his father] was retained by the organ retained in it; from that time forward, and equally during his adult life, his bowel behaved like an hysterically affected organ. The unconscious repressed homosexuality withdrew into his bowel. It was precisely this trait of hysteria which was of such great service in helping to clear up his later illness." So Freud's theories of hysterical conversion have been "validated" by brain scans? Loud guffaw. Leaving aside that such stuff (and much worse in the case history) is difficult to distinguish from a Woody Allen parody, note the allusion to the "clearing up of his later illness" (i.e., depression, the reason the Wolf Man was originally advised to consult Freud). Note also that elsewhere, in relation to the intestinal symptoms, Freud referred to the "final clearing up of my patient's symptoms." Now let's hear what the Wolf Man said of such claims when interviewed much later by Karin Obholzer: Obholzer: And what became of your intestinal disorders? Wolf Man: I somehow got it to come by itself, a few times. And he wrote: 'Weve been successful!' No such thing! The Wolf Man reported that the intestinal problem "has stayed with me to the present day". Similarly Freud's claim of a general "clearing up" of the Wolf Man's symptoms is contradicted by the latter's account of his lifelong recurrence of depression and other symptoms. In Obholzer's book the Wolf Man recounts how the intestinal disorder started when, in his native Russia, a local doctor had prescribed some medicine for diarrhea which another general practitioner later told him was only given to horses, not humans, and that his mucous membranes had been permanently damaged. Freud reports none of this in his case history. After all, it would make redundant his 'tracing' the intestinal problems to some fantastical theory involving the infant Wolf Man's homosexual wish "to be copulated with by his father", and other notions you can't begin to imagine until you read the stuff. One of the most remarkable phenomena in relation to psychological literature in the twentieth century is that Freud's accounts of his clinical experiences, including his 'cures', were uncritically taken at face value by so many people who should have been retaining a modicum of their critical faculties when reading them. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org/ References Esterson, A. (1993). *Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud.* Open Court, pp. 67-93. Obholzer, K. (1982). *The Wolf Man Sixty Years Later: Conversations with Freuds Patient.* Routledge and Kegan Paul. --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
