Why Freud Was Wrong

Summary

Webster argued that Freud became a kind of Messiah and that psychoanalysis is a pseudo-science and a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. He described psychoanalysis as "perhaps the most complex and successful" pseudo-science in history, and Freud as an impostor who sought to found a false religion. However, Webster also wrote that, "My ultimate goal is not to humiliate Freud or to inflict mortal injury either on him or his followers. It is to interpret and illuminate his beliefs and his personality in order that we may better understand our own culture, our own history, and indeed, our own psychology. It is to this constructive attempt to analyse the nature and sources of Freud's mistakes that my title primarily refers."

Webster wrote that while Ernest Jones wrote The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1953-1957) with the avowed objective of correcting a "mendacious legend" about Freud, Jones replaced that negative with a positive legend. Webster maintained that Jones, "did not hesitate to retouch reality wherever it seemed to conflict with the portrait which he sought to create." Webster argued that while Peter Gay's Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988) is presented an objective exercise in historical scholarship, and considers the failings of psychoanalysis and Freud's mistakes, Gay nonetheless retains a reverent attitude toward Freud, preserving the myths about him created by previous biographers. Webster called these myths the "Freud legend". He suggested that the acclaim the book received shows the persistence of the Freud legend, noting that with exceptions such as Peter Swales, many reviewers praised it, especially in Britain. He saw its appeal to supporters of psychoanalysis as being its favorable view of Freudian ideas.

Gilbert Ryle's arguments against mentalist philosophies in The Concept of Mind (1949) were endorsed by Webster, who suggested that they imply that "theories of human nature which repudiate the evidence of behaviour and refer solely or primarily to invisible mental events will never in themselves be able to unlock the most significant mysteries of human nature." Webster wrote that Adolf Grünbaum's The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984) has been criticized by Frank Cioffi, who rejects Grünbaum's portrayal of Freud as a philosophically astute investigator of human psychology. Webster argued that while The Foundations of Psychoanalysis contains many insights and much pertinent criticism of Freud's approach, it has been overvalued by critics of psychoanalysis because of Grünbaum's overly theoretical and abstract style of argument, and has also had the undesirable effect of distracting attention away from issues such as Freud's character. Webster described Frederick Crews's The Memory Wars (1995) as one of the most trenchant and significant contributions to the debate on recovered memory therapy. Webster wrote that psychologist Hans Eysenck's Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985) contains many cogent criticisms of Freud. However, Webster criticized Eysenck for uncritically accepting Thornton's argument that Freud's patient Anna O. suffered from tuberculous meningitis. Webster wrote that some of Thomas Szasz's arguments in The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) are similar to his, but that he disagrees with Szasz's view that hysteria was an emotional problem and that Jean-Martin Charcot's patients were not genuinely mentally ill. Webster concluded that no "negative critique" of psychoanalysis "can ever constitute an adequate refutation" of Freud's theories, because "bad theories can only be driven out by better theories."

Reception

Why Freud Was Wrong was described as "brilliant" by psychiatrist Anthony Storr and biographer Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, and "definitive" by philosopher Raymond Tallis, but was also criticized for shortcomings of scholarship and argument. Peter Swales reviewed the book in Nature. In a preface to the 1998 edition of The Assault on Truth, first published in 1984, former psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson criticized Webster for blaming him for the current interest in recovered memories, writing that he had no interest in the recovery of memories. Psychologist Louis Breger saw some of Webster's points as valuable, but concluded that Webster, like some other critics of Freud, too frequently jumps "from valid criticisms of some part of Freud's work to a condemnation of the whole." Philosopher Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen and psychologist Sonu Shamdasani wrote that Why Freud Was Wrong was made possible by new scholarship on Freud, and formed part of the "Freud Wars", an ongoing controversy around psychoanalysis.

Publishing history

Why Freud Was Wrong was first published in 1995, then republished in 1996 with an added preface, and republished again in 2005 with a new postscript. The work has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Hungarian.