Freud's shelf-life

Frederick Crews in his article, "Cheerful assassin defies analysis", (THES, March 3) presents himself as a sort of St George, "a kind and gentle man" slaying the psychoanalytic dragon because of his honourable "lack of respect" for Freud's "unsubstantiated claims, inflated reputation" and so on.

He also mocks the ad hominem responses which his previous attacks in the New York Review have (he says) received from psychoanalysts.

Two points: first, much of his own attack on psychoanalysis is ad hominem against Freud. He speaks of Freud's "greedy and fatal meddling" in the life of Frink, and the "infamous sequel" to Emma Eckstein's nasal surgery (by Freud's friends, Wilhelm Fliess). Even if one puts the worst possible construction on these complex events, they only go to prove something about Freud's personal demerits.

With regard to psychoanalysis, Crews's substantial point is that "no uniquely psychoanalytic notion has received independent experimental or epidemiological support - not repression, not the Oedipus or castration complex, not the theory of compromise formation" and so on. One can imagine Crews's reaction if some analyst had attempted the "experimental" infliction of trauma on a small child.

Psychoanalysis is not, and cannot be, an experimental science. We - I write as a practising analyst - can only develop our understanding retrospectively, in an attempt to understand what we hear in the consulting room; if themes are repeated, then we begin to sense that these touch on fundamental issues. How else could we work?

Crews is not a clinician, and shows no sensitivity to the complexity of clinical experience. Nor does he seem to be aware that psychoanalysts have also been critical of Freud's ideas and ways of working (though not quite in Crews's own bull-in-a-china shop fashion) and psychoanalytic theory and practice have changed profoundly since the events that preoccupy Crews, few of which are more recent than 1920.

Far from being slain, psychoanalysis remains the principal fountain of ideas from which the burgeoning profession of analytic psychotherapy and psychodynamic counselling are fed. Anyone who believes that understanding emotional difficulties is a worthwhile project is virtually bound to turn to some version of psychoanalytic ideas. They remain, as Peter Gay once called them, "the only game in town".

DAVID BLACK

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