Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, and Psychoanalysis

Richard Webster exposes Sigmund Freud as a charlatan, the inventor of a pseudo-science that falsely claims to explain the human psyche and restore it to health. Freud's theories are not derived from empirical data, or even from Freud's clinical experience. Nor are they original with Freud, but are instead lifted, without attribution, from the general cultural ambiance, or from crackpots like Wilhelm Fleiss, who "cured" mental illness by cauterizing spots inside the nose. Webster builds on the writings of Frederick Crews ("Skeptical Engagements"), Adolf Grunbaum ("The Foundations of Psychoanalysis") and many others - to produce this devastating portrait of a man of titanic ambition and few scruples. At the height of his undeserved fame, Freud boasted that he was another Copernicus; but history is more likely to remember him as another L. Ron Hubbard. Freud's theory of repression - "the very cornerstone of psychoanalysis" - is typically far-fetched: Neurotic symptoms, says Freud, are generated by repressed memories of a "traumatic" sexual experience. Therapy locates the trauma and brings it to conscious awareness, thus releasing pent-up emotion in a kind of catharsis. Presto!! - the symptoms disappear! So much for the hype. In reality, Freud did not derive his theory of repression from empirical data - that is, from the spontaneous "confessions" of his patients. On the contrary, he posits sexual trauma and then insists that patients confirm his assumptions. Thus the only empirical evidence for Freudian "repression" comes from a clinical method that is self-confirming. As for the alleged remedial powers of the Freudian method: Beginning with Anna O., whose case launched Freud's career as a faith-healer, cures have been claimed but never proven. After therapy, Anna wound up in a hospital displaying all of the same symptoms she had to begin with. The placebo effect readily accounts for anyone who feels better after therapy. No, psychoanalysis is effective for one purpose only: extracting money from gullible neurotics. It is remarkable that this rather shoddy confidence trick lasted as long as it did. But on this planet, credulity has never been in short supply.

Richard Webster has done a marvellous job to show how fraudulent Freud really was. More revealing is that all ideas about the human psyche are to be questioned hereafter: the existence of defense mechanisms, existence of the death wish, the existence of the Ego, Superconscience and Id. If you ask me: nothing of these speculative concepts are really true. Webster shows quite convincingly the case against the 'diagnosis' conversion-hysteria. Still accepted in modern psychiatry but a complete misnomer: intrapsychic energy to be converted in physical pain/disorders, how? The whole Freudian thinking is still present in movies, television soaps and more frightening in forensic psychiatry, the military, national intelligence agencies, police departments. Obviously the 'dark side of mankind' has an extremely attractive side to it. What is frightening and disturbing is the fact that this whole conceptual pseudo-thinking about the human psyche (originated with Freud) really is a religionlike belief system. Very difficult to replace and really hindering better therapies for people who are suffering emotionally. Richard Webster's book should be thé textbook in psychology en psychiatry courses to show two things: 1. how our ideas about the human psyche and emotional system is largely based on a pseudo-theory and therefore a better alternative model of emotions and cognitions should be sought (for example in scientifically driven cognitive behaviour therapy).2. how science really should work and should not work.The strange thing is that Webster's book, to my knowledge, is nowhere in the world, really a textbook in psychology or psychiatry courses. Freud is still taught as if he has done some marvellous things and if some of his ideas are still correct. This is the most unbelievable thing of it all. And really frightening.

Among Webster's many scholarly achievements in this meticulous and devastating examination of Freud's life and work, he exposes the extraordinary number of myths about Freud which abounded in the twentieth century. A minor one is that Einstein was a great admirer of Freud. This is erroneous. In a letter to one of his sons in the early 1930s Einstein wrote that he was unconverted by Freud's writings and believed his methods dubious - even fraudulent (cited in *The Private Lives of Albert Einstein*, by Roger Highfield and Paul Carter, p. 233).

At the back of the book, a reviewer is quoted: "What a great demolition job!" And it really is. It puts Freud and all of his theories right where they belong: On history's scrapyard. The seriousity of this book is evident to the reader, one does not doubt that Websters side of the Freud story reveals some long hidden truths. Webster shows that all of Freuds "scientific findings" were nothing else than the thoughts of a very small man who hated mankind, and hated children most of all. Unfortunately, Freud also had a natural authority that made others fear and respect him, and tragicly enough, also believe him. Had Freud lived today, he would have been bancrupt hundred times over from loosing lawsuits, and perhaps also would have been put away behind bars. What Freud has done to patients is really an outrage. Webster also writes that his book is just the beginning - he has opened a door to the biographical facts, where most people have hesitated to go in before him. Freud protected himself from all future critisism by raising the self-made shield: "If you question Freuds truths, that proves that there's something psychologically very wrong with you". Now everyone can search without being brandmarked and stigmatized in this way. And as more people will start digging, the more we will see of the damage Freud did to his patients. And it will become more evident the damage he has done to the conception of Man for a whole century. After the demolition job is done, Webster concludes: Man is nothing even remotely what Freud has described us to be. And he follows up with the most important question of all: When we are nothing of what has been the dominating psychological view for hundred years - who and what and how are we then? And he encourages each and every one to join in the creating of a new and ultimately much more optimistic understanding of Man.

This a damning biography of Freud, making him out to be not only incorrect, but also dishonest - a man who fabricated evidence and theories in order to become famous. It's a great read. This is my bias (and was before I read this book): I don't like Freud's stuff. I think it's absurd, unhelpful and particularly damaging to women. Furthermore, I have come across no evidence to support it. For this reason, reading a book bashing Freud did not in any way offend me. I enjoyed it. People who quite like Freud, however, might not like this book so much. Actually, there is not very much at all about Freud's theories and publications(except his very early stuff), it's more a summary of Freud's acts of dishonesty and faking of evidence, and a general description of an obnoxious character who somehow sucked in an entire generation. There's a broad description of the precursors to modern psychology at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, which I found fascinating and recommend to anybody interested in the history of psychology.