I have found Dr. Easterson's periodic comments about Freud to this list to be interesting and informative - but I often feel like I have walked in late to a symposium or a debate. This feeling has not diminished even after monitoring this list for some time now.
I wonder what is the context for your comments? I know there are pockets of Freudology out there (old school psychiatry, perhaps some unreconstructed English or History or Anthropology Departments, some professional therapeutic communities) but I have not seen much of this within academic psychology per se. I have been trained as a clinician, and teach Personality, Principles of Counseling and History & Systems (among other courses). In my experience Freud has never been much more than a marginal figure within American academic psychology - and barely more than that within most currents of American clinical psychology. Yet your comments seem almost to suggest that you see yourself fighting against a compact majority that uncritically accepts and almost worships at the Freudian alter. Am I reading you incorrectly, or do you live in some psychological neighborhood unknown to me in which Freud reigns supreme? I do hope you keep sending your comments about Freud - I don't agree with all of them, but I do with most and the rest are always intriguing. I find it useful to spend time in courses discussing Freud, and I like getting as many perspectives as possible. *************************************************************** Aubyn Fulton, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Chair, Behavioral Science Department 1 Angwin Ave Angwin, CA 94508 707-965-6536 (office) 707-965-6538 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *************************************************** -----Original Message----- From: Allen Esterson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2004 5:38 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences Subject: [tips] Freud again 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] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
