Hi, Cindy et al, There are so many interesting points raised by Cindy, Jean-Marc, LeeAnn, Nancy and Rod that I scarcely know where to begin! First I think we should be clear what we are talking about. There are at least two separate issues. Where substantive claims have been made about fundamental aspects of human behaviour, especially when these have been said to have been validated, then I think it is right that strict criteria (scientific in a broad sense) should be utilized in assessing such claims. We must ask such questions as: Does the evidence (clinical or otherwise) for a claim withstand close scrutiny? Can it be replicated by independent investigators? And so on. By these criteria Freud�s specific theories have failed abysmally.
When it comes to more general explanatory ideas about day-to-day human behaviour it makes no sense to expect strict scientific validation. They have to be judged by the criteria that apply to humanistic explanations in other disciplines: consistency with the available evidence, plausibility, cogency, self-consistency, with an awareness of the human propensity to �make sense� of people�s behaviour by projecting one�s own prejudices onto the person in question. (And these prejudices include notions routinely presented to students of psychodynamic psychotherapy and associated disciplines.) Most of the discussion has been somewhat in a vacuum, as it so often is when Freud is discussed in general terms. So let�s get down to particulars. Large numbers of distressed people in the heyday of psychoanalysis in the twentieth century spent many hundreds of hours �working through� their supposed infantile failure to negotiate the Oedipal phase of development. And to Nancy�s example of the �refrigerator mother� theory of autism can be added numerous other episodes, such as children suffering from a rare and dreadful neuromuscular disease who had the misfortune to fall into the hands of psychoanalysts who diagnosed their contorted bodies in true Freudian terms as evidence for conversion hysteria (Medawar 1984, pp. 136-140; Dolnick 1998). And they were only following in the Master�s footsteps. It was Freud who reconstructed from a patient�s facial tic and eczema around the mouth that she had been forced in infancy to engage in fellatio by her father (this was in the period when he was �corroborating� his seduction theory). And when his theory changed he found different explanations. Migraine in women represents wishfulfilling unconscious rape phantasies. The source of a man�s profuse sweating on meeting people were unconscious phantasies of deflowering everyone he met: in Freud�s words, �He sweats as he deflowers, working very hard at it.� (Freud 1985, pp. 220, 340, 345) You couldn�t make this kind of stuff up � yet we are supposed to believe (and numerous books have solemnly pronounced) that Freud had a profound understanding of human beings. Tell that to �Dora� and the �Wolf Man�. Should College teachers go on praising Freud in such terms because authors of previous generations have, in their ignorance, made such assessments on the basis of largely mythical stories propagated by Freud and his followers? And the damage done by tendentious, essentially Freudian, symbolic interpreting of dreams and symptoms continued in the 1980s and 1990s in the ubiquitous �uncovering� of unconscious �memories� of early childhood sexual abuse supposedly repressed for decades. These Freudian notions for �reconstructing� early events are not simply ideas about which we can have interesting intellectual discussions. They have repercussions out there in the world beyond the classroom. What about the fundamental general notions about the unconscious mind and its workings that we supposedly owe to Freud? Most of the important basic ideas predate Freud. One can find numerous quotations through the nineteenth century, going back at least as far as Schopenhauer, to show how many ideas traditionally attributed to Freud actually predate his writings. (See, e.g. Altschule 1977, pp. 137-141, 198-199; Lehrer 1995; Webster 1996, pp. xii-xiv) Yes, Freud popularised the notion of unconscious motivations, but in doing so he vulgarized it: In the words of the British psychologist William McDougall, �Freud panders to every vice of popular speech and thinking� (McDougall 1936, p. 180). One achievement of which Freud is undeniably the originator, the fundamental �discovery� of which he was most proud, was the analytic technique of interpretation for purportedly accessing ideas in a patient�s unconscious mind. I think the best verdict on that was given by his friend and colleague Wilhelm Fliess in 1901: �The reader of thoughts merely reads his own thoughts into other people� (Freud 1985, p. 447). Cindy writes of psychoanalytic theory illuminating why fairy stories and myths still speak to us, even across cultures. Yes, it�s an interesting topic, but I don�t believe that the Freudian accounts by the likes of Bruno Bettelheim (he of �refrigerator mother� fame) do much more than illuminate the mind of the interpreter. And on another point, Paul Chodoff reports that sexual arousal during REM sleep is associated with a non-specific expression of an altered metabolic state that has the effect of influencing many other bodily functions (Chodoff 1966, p. 512). Rod writes about Freud�s historical significance (on the mythology of which I�ve made some observations above), and his influence on later theorists. Of course, not only do such theorists repudiate many of the fundamental �discoveries� that Freud claimed he had validated beyond doubt, they differ among themselves about the unconscious processes that they postulate. The psychoanalytic academic Morris Eagle has concluded from a close examination of the different variants of contemporary psychoanalytic theory that they �are on no firmer epistemological ground than the central formulations and claims of Freudian theory� (Eagle 1993, p. 404). And in 1983 he reported that �there is little, or perhaps even less, evidence available on therapeutic process and outcome� for object relations theory and self psychology than in the case of more traditional approaches. (Eagle 1983, p. 49) On another point of Rod�s, I�m sure training as an experimentalist or as a clinician has the tendency to lead to differing approaches towards psychological theory and practice. But in the case of Freud much of what has been traditionally taught (and still remains in College psychology texts) about his early clinical experiences and what he supposedly discovered, is at variance with recent historical research and close analyses of his writings.* That should be a matter of concern to both categories of teachers. *For starters, the account given in psychology texts of how Freud�s psychoanalytic career began with his uncovering patient�s traumatic memories at the root of their symptoms, thereby curing them, is little better than an academic fairy story (Freud 1910, pp. 22-28; Webster 1996, pp. 136-167). Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Dept Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html References Altschuler, M. D. (1977). Origins of Concepts in Human Behavior: Social and Human Factors. New York: Wiley. Chodoff, P. (1966). �A Critique of Freud�s Theory of Infantile Sexuality�, American Journal of Psychiatry, 123 (5), November. Dolnick, E. (1998). Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heydey of Psychoanalysis. New York: Simon and Schuster. Eagle M. (1983). �The Epistemological Status of Recent Developments in Psychoanalytic Theory.� In R. S. Cohen and L. Lauden (eds.), Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Reidel Publishing House. Eagle, M. (1993). �The Dynamics of Theory Change.� In J. Earman et al, Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds: Essays on the Philosophy of Adolf Gr�nbaum. Universtiy of Pittsburgh Press. Freud, S. (1910). �Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis�, in Standard Edition, vol. 11, pp. 7-55. Freud, S. (1985). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, ed. and trans. by J. M. Masson. Harvard University Press. Lehrer, R (1995). Nietzsche�s Presence in Freud�s Life and Thought: On the Origins of a Psychology of Dynamic Mental Functioning. State University of New York Press. MacDougall, W. (1936). Psychoanalysis and Social Psychology. London: Methuen. Medawar, P. (1984). Pluto�s Republic, Oxford University Press. Webster, R. (1996 [1995]). Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis (paperback edition). London: HarperCollins. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
