Joan: In the first part of your critique of Harris's *Nurture Assumption* you write: "When discussing the works of Freud, Watson, Skinner, and Bandura, as well as less luminary researchers, she frequently misinterprets the thrust of their research and perspectives."
(1) Would you care to give some examples of where Harris misinterprets the thrust of Freud's work. (2) You quote Harris as follows: ". . . Freudian theory . . . had an impact on academic psychologists, the kind who do research and publish the results in academic journals. A few tried to find experimental evidence for various aspects of Freudian theory; these efforts were largely unsuccessful. A greater number were content to drop Freudian buzzwords into their lectures and research papers." You respond to this with: "Again, no citation or source and I would suspect quite a surprise to the large numbers of scientific studies published in various psychoanalytic journals." First it should be made clear that Harris's comment cited above was in the context of "the first half of the twentieth century" (Harris 1998, p. 10). You write of large numbers of scientific studies published in psychoanalytic journals that are effectively rebuttals of Harris's contention. Leaving aside that my experience of glancing through past volumes of psychoanalytic journals on numerous occasions tells me that putting "scientific" in the same context as "psychoanalytic journals" is an oxymoron, I would be interested in hearing some examples of psychoanalytic studies *from the first half of the twentieth century" that you have in mind. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
