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Spence's new book attacks the rhetoric of much of psychoanalytic writing. In a sense, he tries to do for the logic of argumentation in psychoanalysis what Schafer (1976) earlier did for its language. Many psychoanalysts will not be enamored of such statements as, “The spread of psychoanalytic theory has brought us back to the Middle Ages once again” (p. 55); or “…the insights revealed by a study of Freud's five cases cannot be separated from the cases themselves” (p. 56); or “…psychoanalytic knowledge has not advanced much beyond Freud's original formulations” (p. 157). Spence, however, places his theme in an intriguing context, that of a change in the inner logic of Freud's mode of argumentation, and that is worth considering. Using a classic distinction of the psychologist Kurt Lewin (1931), Spence argues that Freud's primary mode of thinking was Aristotelian rather than Galilean.
First, some preliminaries. In a chapter entitled “The Second Oedipal Tragedy” Spence examines Freud's change from his 1895 presentation of a series of hysterical cases as likely caused by premature sexual experiences toward the oedipal theory involving fantasized sexual experiences. This is seen as the primary example of Freud's “turning away from evidence” and his new emphasis of theory over evidence. Persuaded by Schimek (1987) rather than Masson and from a reading of the Freud-Fliess letters, it is argued that Freud never really abandoned the seduction theory; rather, he thought the oedipal account was a more comprehensive explanation and he certainly de-emphasized the appearance of early real seduction. For Spence the reason for this is largely personal on Freud's part: his attraction for a young mother and an older father which “sensitized him to the possibility of oedipal rivalry” (p. 20); and a desire to protect his image of his father, whom Freud thought