Beyond Philip Rieff: The Triumph of Sigmund Freud

All philosophical and scientific doctrines should be regarded as partial visions of the truth, which we must expect to be replaced one day by more comprehensive ones.

Any evaluation of Freud and his contribution should be based on an awareness of the complex of forces which enabled him to make his revolutionary discoveries. Basic to these forces was his training in medicine with its emphasis on physiology which at that time was mechanistic in orientation. This had come about primarily through the influence of Helmholtz and his scientific circle. Important as was Freud's training in neurophysiology for his evolution as a scientist, his encounter with Charcot was undoubtedly more significant for his early discoveries than the influence of the Victorian era.

Those critics of Freud who maintain that Freud's theories were the result of a culture in which overt sexuality was prohibited or looked at askance, fail to understand the concept of repression. When they claim that today in the post-sexual revolution, Freud's theory of repression has no relevance, they reveal their inability to grasp that repression is always an unconscious mechanism and that guilt and anxiety can co-exist with sexual libertinism. A contemporary fallacy—not uncommon among sociologists and culturalists in general—is to equate overt behavior with psychic function.

From his association with Charcot, Freud derived the idea of the sexual etiology of hysteria. In 1925, in his autobiographical study, Freud had this to say: “While I was writing my history of the psychoanalytic movement in 1914, there recurred to my mind some remarks that had been made to me by Breuer, Charcot, and Chrobak, which might have led me to this discovery earlier but at the time I heard them I did not understand what these authorities meant; indeed, they had told