Jean Webster Elaine Showalter Popular Books
Jean Webster Elaine Showalter Biography & Facts
Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis (1995; second edition 1996; third edition 2005) is a book by Richard Webster, in which the author provides a critique of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, and attempts to develop his own theory of human nature. Webster argues that Freud became a kind of Messiah and that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience and a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Webster endorses Gilbert Ryle's arguments against mentalist philosophies in The Concept of Mind (1949), and criticizes many other authors for their treatment of Freud and psychoanalysis. The book for which Webster may be best remembered, it has been called "brilliant" and "definitive", but has also been criticized for shortcomings of scholarship and argument. It formed part of the "Freud wars", an ongoing controversy around psychoanalysis. Summary Webster argues that Freud became a kind of Messiah and that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience and a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. He describes psychoanalysis as "perhaps the most complex and successful" pseudoscience in history, and Freud as an impostor who sought to found a false religion. However, Webster also writes 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." He discusses the influence on Freud of the otolaryngologist Wilhelm Fliess and the biologist Ernst Haeckel. Webster writes 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 maintains that Jones, "did not hesitate to retouch reality wherever it seemed to conflict with the portrait which he sought to create." Webster argues that while Peter Gay's Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988) is presented as 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 suggests 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. He endorses Gilbert Ryle's arguments against mentalist philosophies in The Concept of Mind (1949), suggesting 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 writes that the philosopher 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 argues that while the book contains much pertinent criticism of Freud, it has been overvalued by critics of psychoanalysis because of its overly theoretical and abstract style of argument, and has also distracted attention away from issues such as Freud's character. Webster compared the former psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's The Assault on Truth (1984) to E. M. Thornton's The Freudian Fallacy (1983), finding both authors hostile towards Freud and psychoanalysis. However, he suggested that Masson nevertheless retained a partly positive view of Freud. Webster credited Masson with making some contributions to the history of psychoanalysis, but wrote that his central argument has not convinced either the psychoanalytic establishment or the majority of Freud's critics, as Masson accepted that Freud formulated the seduction theory on the basis of memories of childhood seduction provided by his patients, an account disputed by scholars such as Cioffi, Thornton, Han Israëls, and Morton Schatzman, who have argued that Freud's original account of his therapeutic methods suggests that this is not what occurred. According to Webster, Freud's seduction theory maintained that episodes of childhood seduction would have a pathological effect only if the victim had no conscious recollection of them, and the purpose of his therapeutic sessions was not to listen to freely offered recollections but to encourage his patients to discover or construct scenes of which they had no recollection. Webster blamed Masson for encouraging the spread of the recovered memory movement by implying that most or all serious cases of neurosis are caused by child sexual abuse, that orthodox psychoanalysts were collectively engaged in a massive denial of this fact, and that an equally massive collective effort to retrieve painful memories of incest was required. Webster describes the critic Frederick Crews's The Memory Wars (1995) as one of the most significant contributions to the debate on recovered memory therapy. Webster writes that the psychologist Hans Eysenck's Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985) contains many cogent criticisms of Freud, but criticizes Eysenck for uncritically accepting Elizabeth Thornton's argument that Joseph Breuer's patient Anna O. suffered from tuberculous meningitis. Webster writes that some of Thomas Szasz's arguments in The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) are similar to his, but that he disagrees with his view that hysteria was an emotional problem and that Jean-Martin Charcot's patients were not genuinely mentally ill. Webster concludes 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." Publication history Why Freud Was Wrong was first published in 1995 by HarperCollins. In 1996, an edition with an added preface was published. In 2005, an edition with a new postscript was published by The Orwell Press. The work has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Hungarian. Reception Media commentary Why Freud Was Wrong received positive reviews from Genevieve Stuttaford in Publishers Weekly, the psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey in National Review, and the critic David Lodge in Commonweal, a mixed review from Dennis G. Twiggs in Library Journal, and a negative review from the historian Frank McLynn in New Statesman & Society. The book was also reviewed by Brenda Grazis in Booklist, the biographer Paul Ferris in The Spectator, the psychologist Stuart Sutherland in The Times Higher Education Supplement, R. H. Balsam in Choice, th.... Discover the Jean Webster Elaine Showalter popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jean Webster Elaine Showalter books.
Best Seller Jean Webster Elaine Showalter Books of 2024
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