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Richard Webster is far from the first student of English literature to attempt to expose Freud's psychoanalysis as failed. He believes, however, that Freud is a different kind of modern day emperor, not exactly without any clothes on at all, but rather with hidden priestly robes barely discernible under his manifest white coat. For not only is psychoanalysis a pseudoscience, it is essentially and merely a version of traditional Judeo-Christian religion.
Webster compares Freud with Jesus and St. Paul, with God, with Moses, and often derides him as the Messiah who will not come. “In view of the accumulating mass of trenchant criticism which has appeared during the past two decades it might well seem that the case against Freud has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. … yet this is far from being the case” (p. 25). Webster makes it crystal clear from the very outset of this long, tendentious book that his attempt will not be like those of any before him: “It is true that if I did not believe that Freud could be unseated, and unseated in an even more comprehensive and conclusive manner than he has been yet, I would not have thrown down my gauntlet in quite this way.