The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute!

This devastating book has two parts: (1) The Unknown Freud, where the reader gets a picture of Freud as a dictator, a megalomaniac and egotripper. A pope who alone knew the truth and who founded a secret commission to protect his 'church' against the heathen. He was a bad psychoanalyst (e.g. the Wolf Man case) and a venal man (e.g. the catastrophic Horace Fink case, where he tried to get his own hands on some money of the heiress). I agree with the author that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience - statements cannot be tested and the research results cannot be verified uniformly. Although it is not totally without meaning (Karl Popper), it is not a science. (2) the revenge of the repressed A frontal attack on the caste of the psychoanalysts, depicted as 'religious zealots, self-help evangelists, sociopolitical ideologues, and outright charlatans who trade in the ever seductive currency of guilt and blame, while keeping the doctor's fees mounting.' The author is particularly severe with their latest 'school' : the 'recovered memory movement', based on the rape of children by their parents (really!). This lead to false accusations and condemnations of innocent people. No wonder the author predicts an accelerating collapse of psychoanalysis as a respected institution. A much needed and courageous book to halt a profession riding at full speed on a misty highway. And a much needed angle on Freud as a person, written in a style to slaughter the not so innocent father of psychoanalysis. After reading this book, I agree with Peter Medawar, who called doctrinaire psychoanalytic theory "the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century".

Frederick Crews really knows how to tap that deep reservoir of hostility found in modern Freudian psychoanalysts. In 1993 and 1994 FC wrote two essays in the New York Review of Books debunking Freud in the first, and tearing to shreds the recovered memory movement in the second. These two essays and the letters in response to them have been put into the book The Memory Wars. As someone trained in experimental psychology you can guess my own personal bias in this matter. Crews discusses Freud's botched cases; his frequent vacillation in theory formation; some of his sillier theories; and his serious interjection of personal bias into the formation of his beliefs. The main problem with the whole Freudian system is the total lack of scientific evidence supporting it. Freudian psychoanalysis is founded on anecdote and supported by anecdotes. To be fair, much current non-Freudian therapy is also based on anecdote. Indignant Freud followers write back, and their letters are indeed interesting (and often pompous).The second half of the book takes on the recovered memory movement. It would be great to poke fun at this movement if it weren't for the fact that it has caused so much damage to all parties involved. Symptoms checklists are published with the statement if you suffer from these symptoms you may be a victim of sexual abuse. Read the list and you will find that the majority of Americans will find that they have been abused. It's all a patient seduction game with the intent to make big money. Hospitals have even set up units to treat such patients (Having worked in the psychiatric hospital industry I am well aware of the "product lines" that such facilities set up in order to fill beds). Crews does an excellent job of dissecting the memory movement, and once again we get to read the indignant responses.Those who believe that psychological therapy should be based on sound scientific evidence will love this book. Those who have accepted Freudianism with a religious like faith will, of course, hate it. To me this whole subject is analogous to the evolution vs. creationist debate. It's science versus pseudoscience.

For those of you who have swallowed the Freud legend hook, line, and sinker, this book may help get you off the hook. Seriously, though, this book is not one to miss, regardless of your theoretical beliefs. For you Freudians, it dispuptes the naive hagiographies of Peter Gay and Jones, and prepares you to engage in the current battles that rage about Freud and his ideas. You might not like what it says, but it will challenge you and force you to more critically evaluate your beliefs. Like it or not, many of your colleagues and students are now challenging Freudianism, and the challenge is stiff, indeed. A Freudian needs to be prepared!For those of you already skeptical of Freud's claims and disconcerted at the negative sequelae of his theories, this provides a wonderfully cogent dissection. It is easier to read than some of the other titles in this area (such as Malcom MacMillon's "Freud Evaluated, the Completed Arc"), yet covers the ground well. Given the unexamined Freud worship found in most textbooks and class materials, it is a wonderful addition to a class textbook (and I use it as such). I highly recommend this book to all.

Compilations of journalism rarely turn into books of resounding intellectual importance: this is an exception. Crews writes about Freud and the "recovered memory movement" with grace and clarity, and also with a merciless, vitriolic anger which would seem excessive were it not for the strength of the case he mounts. He describes psychoanalysis as "the paradigmatic pseudoscience of our epoch" and Freud's legacy as one of "immense damage." Some of the responses to Crews' original essays, reprinted here, tell you more about the sorry, deeply dishonest state of the psychoanalytic profession than they do about the author they seek to criticize. Nobody interested in psychoanalysis and the unconscious--indeed, nobody who thinks that Freud is one of the great men of the twentieth century--should miss the opportunity to boil their brains clean in these remarkable pages. ---Richard Far