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.
, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend. By Frank J. Sulloway New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1979, XXVI + 612pp.
One of the central theses of this book is that history is written for a purpose. Sulloway believes that a major purpose motivating analysts' view of the history of their field is to aggrandize Freud and Freudianism. The subtitle of his book is “Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend.” Sulloway's own avowed purposes, expressed in somewhat self-aggrandizing terms, are to write a “comprehensive intellectual biography of Sigmund Freud,” “to mark a watershed in the history of Freud studies,” “to show that psychoanalysis has become a cryptobiology,” and “to construct a natural history of history itself.”
Sulloway's reach has exceeded his grasp. His book is a significant contribution but gravely flawed in its distorted perspective of the role of biology in Freud's work. One wonders what Sulloway's own covert motives may be. His ambivalence toward Freud is striking. His devaluation of laudatory views of Freud are regularly followed by affirmation of Freud's greatness. We might gain a clue if we knew more of Sulloway's own theoretical position about the issues he discusses but we have only hints. After what would seem to be a good deal of criticism of Freud's genetic psychobiology he tells us approvingly that Wilson's sociobiology will carry the work forward. He agrees with Breuer that Freud overemphasized sex. He finds the idea that infantile suckling is sexual rather far fetched. And perhaps most surprisingly he hints in a footnote that Freud's personality may be illuminated by the Adlerian theories about birth order in a sibship: “Freud