You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The distinctive culture of the twentieth century has been profoundly influenced by the ideas of three towering figures—all born in the nineteenth century—Einstein, Marx and Freud. … A large part of the Freudian vocabulary has become an integral part of common usage. There have not been lacking claims that potentially the Freudian theory of man is more farreaching than all others precisely because it concerns the human mind and behavior. (Hook, 1959, pp. xi-xii)
Trained in the pragmatist tradition, Sidney Hook was a working philosopher, active in the arena of politics and culture. Impressed by Freud's discoveries, he was nonetheless uncomfortable about their scientific status. To explore this anomaly, he organized a conference in March 1958, bringing together a distinguished company: among the philosophers were Ernest Nagel, Adolf Grünbaum, and Max Black; among the psychoanalysts were Heinz Hartmann, Abram Kardiner, Jacob A. Arlow, and Lawrence S. Kubie.
To the psychoanalysts, Hook voiced a basic challenge:
… what kind of evidence were they prepared to accept which would lead them to declare in any specific case that a child did not have an Oedipus complex?… This question has a history. I have asked it innumerable times since I read Freud in 1919.† (Hook, 1959, p. 214)