Stephen Black wrote:
The problem, as usual, begins with Freud, and as our resident
Freud expert, Allen Esterson, will undoubtedly tell you, Freud
is a fraud.
Unlike some Freud critics of my acquaintance, I don't actually think
Freud was a fraud. I think the theoretical notions he derived from
Breuer and developed further in the 1890s constituted a reasonable
working hypothesis for the time. The problem was he was excessively
certain about the correctness of his current ideas and was always able
to convince himself that his clinical procedures were verifying the
theory. And on the rare occasion, around 1898, that he was driven by
experience to realize he had over-reached himself with his claims of
having validated his theory of the aetiology of hysteria and
obsessional neurosis, he couldn't face up to the fact that this might
be because his theoretical assumptions were leading to spurious
clinical 'findings'. In the words of the philosopher Clark Glymour:
"Freud was faced with the evidence that the methods on which almost all
of his work relied were in fact unreliable, Freud had many
scientifically honourable courses of action. [Glymour puts forward
three suggestions.] He did none of these things, or others one might
conceive. Instead he published *The Interpretation of Dreams* to
justify by rhetorical devices the very methods he had every reason to
distrust."
In fact what he did was to develop his theories in such a way that his
analytic technique of interpretation made them virtually
refutation-proof.
Though there are documentable occasions when Freud can be shown to have
been intellectually dishonest, I think more significant was his
considerable capacity for self-deception.
Reference
Glymour, C. "The Theory of Your Dreams". In R. S. Cohen & L. Laudan
(eds.), *Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (1983). D. Reidel
Publishing Company: 57-71.
Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
http://www.esterson.org
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