Word: freuds
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This last phenomenon is an intensification of an ongoing story. While Freud was winning cadres of acolytes and legions of notional recruits, he and his ideas regularly attracted sharp attacks, often from influential quarters. As early as 1909, philosopher William James observed in a letter that Freud "made on me personally the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas." Vladimir Nabokov, whose novels trace the untrammeled and unpredictable play of individual imaginations, regularly tossed barbs at "the witch doctor Freud" and "the Viennese quack." For similar reasons, Ludwig Wittgenstein objected to the pigeonholing effects of psychoanalytic categories, even though...
...steady rain of anti-Freud arguments did little to discourage the parade of his theories or to dampen the zeal of his followers. In fact, Freud erected an apparently invulnerable umbrella against criticisms of psychoanalytical principles. He characterized such disagreements, from patients or anyone else, as "resistance" and then asserted that instances of such resistance amounted to "actual evidence in favor of the correctness" of his assertions. For a long time, this psychoanalytic Catch-22 worked wonders: those who opposed the methods put forth to heal them and others could be banished, perhaps with a friendly handshake and a knowing...
That illogical defense has largely crumbled. The recent discovery of documents relating to Freud and his circle, plus the measured release of others by the Freud estate, has provided a steadily expanding body of evidence about the man and his works. Some of the initial reassessments are unsettling...
...example, the 10-year collaboration between Freud and Carl Gustav Jung broke off abruptly in 1914, with profound consequences for the discipline they helped create. There would henceforth be Freudians and Jungians, connected chiefly by mutual animosities. Why did a warm, fruitful cooperation end in an icy schism? In A Most Dangerous Method (Knopf; $30), John Kerr, a clinical psychologist who has seen new diaries, letters and journals, argues that the growing philosophical disputes between Freud and Jung were exacerbated by a cat-and-mouse game of sexual suspicion and blackmail. Freud believed an ex-patient of Jung's named...
...this any way to found an objective science? Freud's defenders argue that his personal life is irrelevant to his contributions to learning -- a rather odd contention, given Freud's statement that his development of the analytic method began with his pioneering analysis of himself. Nevertheless, Arnold Richards, editor of the American Psychoanalytic Association newsletter, dismisses any attention paid to Freud's private conduct: "It has no scientific practical consequence. It's not relevant to Freud's theory or practice...