This column inaugurates what will be an ongoing feature in TAP. Responses of our members to pieces appearing in the print and broadcast media will regularly be published here in order to correct distorted portrayals of psychoanalysis.
Irene Chiarandini, chair of the Committee on Public Information, requests that members writing responses to the media send a copy to the Committee in care of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 309 East 49th Street, New York, NY 10017 (Fax: 212 593–0571).
In its November 29, 1993, issue, Time magazine featured a cover story entitled “The Assault on Freud.” Written by Paul Gray, the essay purported to deal with current thinking about psychoanalysis, but the critics it cited voiced a variety of dated attacks.
Is Freud dead? Well, all men die, and Freud is dead with Copernicus, Darwin, and Einstein. But ideas do live on; and Freud's basic concepts of a dynamic unconscious mind, of the meaningfulness of all human events, of the body's tremendous influence on the mind, of the centrality of psychic conflict, of the determining power of our earliest experiences on later life, are going to last as long as human beings do. Psychoanalytic thought is fundamental not only to the psychology but also to the value of the individual—so threatened today, as it was also in Freud's lifetime, by current popular culture. Shame on you, Time magazine!
Leonard Shengold
Frederick Crews, chair of the Department of English at the University of California-Berkeley, wrote “The Unknown Freud,” a lengthy article that appeared in the November 18, 1993, issue of The New York Review of Books. The article criticized psychoanalysis as a science and as a therapy. In addition, Crews denounced Freud on a personal level.
It was very surprising and disappointing that such a distinguished periodical as The New York Review of Books would publish an article containing gross misunderstandings and scurrilous comments against Freud and psychoanalysis by Professor Frederick Crews. Readers of The Review should expect sober and scholarly appraisal rather than what appears to be a series of emotionally charged statements which deal more with misperceptions and misconceptions than scientific, objective evaluation. It appears that Freud cannot be allowed human frailty, errors, or lack of present-day knowledge. Even his critics are criticized for not being critical enough. The enduring discoveries of his revolutionary genius are cavalierly dismissed with superficial consideration and supercilious contempt.
At this time, Freud's initial propositions, first findings, and landmark case reports are no longer vital for the validation of psychoanalytic formulations. Further, as psychoanalysis became popularized, many concepts were distorted and bowdlerized—a tendency which can be discerned in the Crews article.
Freud is part of our culture, our way of comprehending personality development and disorder. All rational psychotherapy is based upon psychoanalytic principles. Psychoanalysis provides a fundamental mode of exploring and understanding art and literature, biography and history, etc. The concepts of repression, regression, denial, projection, and “Freudian slip” have become part of our language. Colloquial expressions can confirm psychoanalytic formulations…. Shakespeare intuited ego defenses and can be invoked in “me thinks Dr. Crews doth protest too much.”
Dr. Crews implied that the Sigmund Freud Archives has concealed documents to protect Freud's reputation. This is contrary to the fact that the Archives' policy has been to derestrict and release Freud correspondence as quickly as legally and ethically possible. Professor Crews cites a document restricted to 2102 when he could have ascertained that this document was already derestricted. Material in the Archives is now largely derestricted, in fact, and many of the new Freud documents have become available through the Sigmund Freud Archives.
Finally, the encompassing explanatory reach of psychoanalytic theory and the immense value of psychoanalytic therapy stand on their own merits, having endured the test of time and continuing challenge. Psychoanalysis has developed independent of the person, personality, and personal life of its creator. But Freud could in the final analysis have ironically observed, 'They may attack my theories by day, but they dream of them at night.“
Harold P. Blum
Bernard L. Pacella