Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend

If even half of what is stated in this book is true, then there can be no doubt that Freud was a bullying, lying fraud, and his theories worthless gibberish. This collection of essays has a stunning impact. For example" "It is an established folklore that Freud come slowly and reluctantly to...the role of sexuality in...neurotic illness. And, like most psychoanalytic folklore, it derives directly from Freud's repeated assertions of it. But it is completely untrue" (p 37). Freud sneered at his oppotents "by stigmatizing them as too cowardly to face the hard truths of his own doctrine" (p 107). In fact, there appears to be no science at all behind Freud's assertions. Just his assumptions, and poor assumptions they were, at that. Who can avoid smiling today at his belief that all little girls longed to grow a penis? Or what about his belief that he had unlocked the real meaning of our dreams, and that he had empirically well supported proof of this? Current research into the brain proves this nonsense.

This collection of essays edited by F. Crews is devastating for S. Freud and psychoanalysis. The essays show Freud as a fabricator of his patients's confessions, a liar, a cheat, a ruthless censor, a myth creator (about himself), a paranoiac, an icy remorseless opportunist, a jealous and imperious character full of a priori's, a megalomaniac, an impostor, a tyrant and a misogynist ('the self-evident superiority of male to female sex organs'; 'civilisation was a male creation.') He projected his own obsessions in his patients and in his analytical writings; e.g. his book 'Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood' reviewed by D.E. Stannard. He could himself not show one singe validated psychoanalytical cure! More, he was even not interested in cures: 'I prefer a student ten times more than a neurotic.' His pseudoscience yielded pseudo-evidence. The basic method of psychoanalysis ('free associations') is torpedoed by the esaays of Adolf Grunbaum and Sebastiano Timpanaro. Freud turned the dreams, symptoms, errors, memories and associations of his patients into spurious links, like between (F. Ciolli) 'defloration and migraine, birth pangs and appendicitis, pregnancy wishes and hysterical vomiting, pregnancy fears and anorexia, accouchement and a suicidal leap, castration fears and obsessive preoccupation with hat tipping, masturbation and the practice of squeezing blackheats, the anal theory of birth and hysterical constipation, parturition and a falling cart-horse, unwed motherhood and a limp, guilt over the practice of seducing pubescent girls and the compulsion to sterilize bank notes before passing them on, etc.' As Karl Kraus said (quoted in this book): 'psychoanalysis is itself the illness which it claims to cure.' After these mind-boggling essays psychoanalysis as a science is clinically dead. This book is a formidable accusatory and a must read.

A brilliant book -- and a 'must' purchase for anyone who pretends to (or anyone who wants to) "know" the "real Freud". The clarity of the writing -- see especially Crews' "Introduction" -- is like a refreshing, cool glass of clear water cutting through the turgid tangle which Freud hoped noone would ever have the patience to unwind.

Frederick Crews is the best writer on Freud, and he has gathered a must-read collection of essays that examine and debunk Freudian doctrines. Lively but fairminded,this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Freud truly said. Crews's introductory comments alone are worth the price of the book.