II Zvi Lothane

The single most essential achievement of Freud, the towering psychological genius of our time, is this: the rediscovery of the healing power of the spoken word. Speaking one's spontaneously emerging thought within the patient-doctor dialogue, set within the frame of the patient-doctor relationship, is the essence of Freud's psychoanalytic method. It is the instrument both of healing and of investigation. It is a basic psychological fact. The rest is Freud's theories, hypotheses, doctrines—and biases—about mind, the individual, family, society, culture, civilization, and morals. To miss the distinction between method and theory is to misunderstand Freud. It has been made once and for all by Roland Dalbiez,2 an Aristotelian philosopher and psychotherapist: between Freud's original psychoanalytic method of the exploration of unconscious mental activity and Freudism, the collected theories, at various removes from the psychoanalytic situation. A further distinction needs to be made between Freud's formulations that are operational and intrinsic to the psychoanalytic situation, such as free association, defense, transference; and those extrinsic to it, such as psychic energy, libido, life and death instincts, the Oedipus complex; inspired by Freud's readings and his experiences outside the psychoanalytic dialogue.

The new biography of Freud, by Dr. Frank J. Sulloway, a Harvard-trained historian of science, has created a stir among the lay and the learned. In some quarters it has been hailed as a spectacular breakthrough. In others it has been met with hurt and indignation. Both the accolades and the attacks are undeserved, more indicative of the current social climate of the psychoanalytic profession than of the validity of Sulloway's contribution. Freud has eluded Sulloway.

For all his impressive erudition, painstaking documentation, and gracefulness of prose, Sulloway does not live up to his promise of