In the interview reported by Chris, Franz Maciejewski says the following re the supposed Minna Bernays/Sigmund Freud affair: > One conclusion may be that psychoanalysis can no longer be held together > by appeals to the personal integrity of its founder, but only by its > heuristic power as a complex theoretical system.
What I find interesting is that in the year 2007 Maciejewski implies that *with this revelation* (if such it be) psychoanalysis can't now appeal to Freud's personal integrity. Yet evidence that appeals to Freud's integrity would be unwarranted have been in the public domain for some considerable time now. Not for nothing did Frank Cioffi finish his essay for the 1998 Library of Congress Freud Exhibition with the suggestion that "the ultimate division in the Freud controversy is between those who would be happy to purchase a used car from Freud or his advocates and those who would not."[1]. Indeed it was Cioffi who, nearly 35 years ago, pointed out manifest falsehoods in Freud's accounts of the seduction theory episode in his seminal talk on BBC radio in 1973 called "Was Freud a Liar?"[2] Some elements of Freud's grossly erroneous retrospective accounts of this episode may charitably be put down to self-serving memory failures, but others, especially in the first report (1906), could only have been deliberate. See the section headed "Extrication from potential disaster" at: http://www.esterson.org/Mythologizing_psychoanalytic_history.htm But even before the seduction theory episode (and as pointed out by Ernest Jones long before Cioffi's pioneering article), Freud had published journal articles in which he falsely claimed to have demonstrated the use of cocaine to cure morphine addiction without addiction to cocaine. Only ten days after the commencement (in 1984) of the supposed cure the individual in question, Ernst von Fleischl, was forced to resume the use of morphine to relieve the pain of severe trigeminal neuralgia following another operation, and early the following year (as reported by Freud to his future wife Martha) he was taking enormous doses of cocaine. Yet Freud continued to publish claims of the supposedly successful "cure", and resorted to falsehood when publicly maintaining this claim in 1987. See Borch-Jacobsen (2000).[3] This kind of discrepancy between what he revealed in private correspondence and his public pronouncements was repeated when in 1898 he publicly claimed that he "owed a great number of [therapeutic] successes to his new psychoanalytic technique", and that its application "exclusively" [sic] to severe cases of hysteria and obsessional neurosis made the test of its success "all the more convincing." Contrast this with his several times acknowledging to his friend Wilhelm Fliess in this very same period that "The cases of hysteria are proceeding very poorly. I shall not finish a single one this year either."[4] And if we return to the new finding by Franz Maciejewski, what is really significant about it is not any (apparent) revelation that Freud had sexual relations with his sister-in-law, but that, as Peter Swales convincingly demonstrated in an article published in 1982 (and alluded to by Maciejewski), in the most celebrated of his examples of a "Freudian slip" in *The Psychopathology of Everyday Life* the supposed "acquaintance" with whom Freud engaged in lengthy exchanges was none other than Freud himself.[5] (A similar deception had been perpetrated by Freud in the 1899 "Screen Memories" paper, and, as Jones reports, when the 1899 paper was included in the 1925 volumes of his writings Freud even resorted to excising an autobiographical passage in *The Interpretation of Dreams* which threatened to expose his subterfuge.) And that only takes us to the early stages of Freud's psychoanalytic career! So much for the "personal integrity" that Maciejewski believes is only now in question with his recent apparent confirmation of a sexual liaison between Freud and Minna Bernays. References: 1. Cioffi, F. (1998). "The Freud Controversy: What is at Issue." In *Freud: Conflict and Culture*, New York: Knopf, pp. 171-182. 2. Cioffi, F. (1974). "Was Freud a Liar?" Reprinted in *Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience* (1998), Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, pp. 199-204. 3. Borch-Jacobsen, M. (2000). "How Fabrications Differ from a Lie." London Review of Books, Vol. 22, No. 8, 13 April 2000: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n08/print/borc01_.html 4. Esterson, A. (2001). "The mythologizing of psychoanalytic history: deception and self deception in Freuds accounts of the seduction theory episode." History of Psychiatry, xii, pp. 329-352: http://www.esterson.org/Mythologizing_psychoanalytic_history.htm 5. Swales, P. J. (1982). "Freud, Minna Bernays, and the Conquest of Rome: New Light on the Origins of Psychoanalysis." The New American Review, Spring/Summer 1982, pp. 1-23. -------------------------------------------- Thu, 17 May 2007 16:51:37 -0400 Author: "Christopher D. Green" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Fwd: Did Freud sleep with his wife's sister? From MedScape] > > Harzem Peter wrote: > > > > This is a remarkable yet small example of a phenomenon about which I > > have wondered from time to time but for which I have no answer. Is > > there another, contemporary, 'western' culture that is so titillated, > > and so persistently interested as we are in the sexual lives > > of other people, extending from neighbors and colleagues to great > > thinkers of history--for example in Psychology Sigmund Freud, John B. > > Watson, and many others? > > I ask this both as a comment and as a question to historians. Any > > ideas, answers, speculations, etc.? > Which Western culture did you mean, Peter? Your British? My Canadian, > Most other TIPSters' American? Or Maciejewski's German culture? (I > assume he's German, because he did his PhD in Frankfurt, but the name > is, I think, Polish.) > > In any case, I think there can be little doubt that Americans are > particularly fascinated with the sex lives of celebrities (not that > citizens of other countries don't have some interest in such matter, but > it seems to be much more heightened in the US). A recent international > survey found that Americans experience a much higher degree of guilt > with respect to extramarital sex than European cultures. Fran¨ois > Mitterand had a mistress of decades standing, who was known to all and > even attended his funeral, with no visible impact on his political > career. American politicians have been regularly hounded out of > campaigns and even out of office for far less (though not all -- see, > e.g., Newt Gingrich and Denis Hastert). No doubt this derives from the > country's puritanical roots and highly-religious present. > > But with Freud, the interest is heightened even further because of the > central role sex played in his theory of psychological development. We > find out Einstein had an affair and we might jsut shrug. We find out > Freud had an affair and we at least toy with idea that we now have > special insight (rightly or wrongly). > > Regards, > Chris > -- > > Christopher D. Green > > Department of Psychology > > York University > > Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 > > Canada > > > > 416-736-5115 ex. 66164 > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > http://www.yorku.ca/christo > > ====================================== --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
