While on the subject of the adducing of selective facts to 'corroborate' a pet theory while ignoring material that is not in accord with it... (see my previous message, 16 October):
Yesterday I wrote: > ...Cioffi's exposure of the manifestly false accounts Freud gave of the > [seduction > theory] episode was ignored (or on the rare occasions it was > noted, derided) for > more than a decade and a half [...] Yet Cioffi had > demonstrated his contentions by the simple expedient of comparing > Freud's three 1896 seduction theory papers with the rather different >(and mutually inconsistent) accounts he gave later. An additional point of interest in relation to the above is the continuing failure in some quarters to acknowledge that Freud's later accounts of the seduction theory episode, on which the celebrated traditional story rests, are grossly misleading. Phil Mollon, for instance, in his booklet *Freud and False Memory Syndrome* (2000) [essentially a reproduction of the corresponding sections of his book *Remembering Trauma: A Psychotherapist's Guide to Memory and Illusion* (Wiley, 1998)], discounts published assertions that Freud's retrospective reports are inconsistent with his 1896 papers. The allegations "have little substance", he tells his readers with the kind of confidence that no doubt will have convinced the great bulk of them, who are unlikely to examine the writings that Mollon castigates. Yet Mollon is able to 'demonstrate' his case only by being highly selective with the Freud quotations he provides, and by alluding to (significantly, without citation) a statement allegedly made by Freud that doesn't exist! See my detailed critique of his book *Freud and False Memory Syndrome* at: http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/infc/1_gesamt_en.html ("Esterson vs. Mollon" link") Who was it who said "If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything"? A variation on this is: "If you select carefully enough from among the evidence available you can generally 'prove' your point." I can only presume with people who refuse to even countenance the contention that Freud misled his readers that the concept of "Freud" that they have absorbed from their early reading, and from subsequent more specialised study in the case of a psychoanalyst like Mollon, makes it almost literally inconceivable that he could be other than the scrupulous "seeker after truth" of erstwhile legend. Allen Esterson --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
