Freud and His Followers: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities

This book is a treasure trove of information about Freud and his early followers. Roazen (who had already published two previous works on Freud) interviewed 110 of Freud's former patients, colleagues and family members in order to obtain an inside perspective on Freud. These interviews, combined with a thorough knowledge of Freud's writings, lend an unequalled candor to Roazen's account. As a consequence, Roazen's book was not only highly insightful, it was quite literally jaw dropping. (After taking more than 15 pages of notes from my borrowed copy, I realized I was simply going to have to purchase this book--a decision I have not regretted, as I refer to it almost daily.) Freud had an unusual pull on the members of his coterie. He could rightly be called a charismatic figure, even a cult leader. (Critics of his own time compared psychoanalysis to a "cult"--and with good reason). Freud's personality was so powerful that to this day his detractors are met with the full force of religious outrage. During Freud's lifetime, those who left his circle could only do so through "excommunication" or death (suicide). How did this man manage to sway so many otherwise intelligent people, and so completely? Although Roazen holds the view that Freud was a genius, the portrait he paints, often unwittingly, is that of a man who sought total control over his followers. According to those who knew him best, Freud demanded "all or nothing" from his friends, colleagues, and even his family. When his fiancée, Martha Bernays, made living arrangements to accommodate her mother, Freud wrote, "If that is so, you are my enemy...You have only an Either-Or." This "either-or" attitude permeated all of Freud's relationships. When he mentored young psychoanalysts, they were his "sons" until they showed some independence of thought. Then they rapidly became his "enemies", apostates for whom he retained a lasting hatred. Not surprisingly, his followers took up Freud's behavior with relish, ejecting, excommunicating and putting on public "trial" those colleagues who dared question the absolute "truth" of Freud's findings. They became zealots, not scientists. Of course, it was Freud, not his followers, who started the myth that psychoanalysis was a science. In spite of the fact that he himself never followed the methods that he so convincingly described, Freud's thoughts, writings, and psychoanalytic utterances rapidly became dogma. "Do as I say, not as I do," was the operating principle behind Freud's teachings. His "discoveries" were no more scientific, as the majority of them were derived from Freud's "self-analysis." (Even at the time, psychiatrists questioned the validity of Freud's "discoveries," declaring them to be nothing more than the speculations of an over-active imagination.) It was only through the single-minded efforts of Freud, the fanatical devotion of his followers, and the publicity provided by Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays (who was one of the most influ