[Ed. note: this letter is slightly abridged from the original, with permission of the author]
On August 18th, 2002, the Board of Directors of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association voted unanimously to write to the editors and the readership of all of the major psychoanalytic journals and newsletters. Our purpose is to share with you our grave concerns about some of the materials found on the website of the Freud Museum in London. During the past several months, very many of our members, along with other psychoanalytic colleagues, have called to our attention the disturbing nature of some of these web pages.
After learning of these concerns, we undertook a careful study of the Museum web pages. We then wrote to the Director, Research Director and Director of Education (the person responsible for these particular web pages), expressing the substance of our concerns. The replies we received were wholly unsatisfactory. Although minor changes were made in some areas, additional offensive and problematic material was added at the same time, and all three individuals justified the material on these pages in the context of freedom of expression and of making Freud relevant in today's times.
We want to invite your readers to view the Freud Museum website and evaluate for yourselves the nature of the problem. The stated mission of the Freud Museum is to “celebrate the life and work of Sigmund and Anna Freud.” But the web pages in the section entitled “Freud Today” are not in any substantive way related to the work of Sigmund and Anna Freud. Nor, for that matter, are they a presentation of the current status of psychoanalytic thinking, theory and practice, which, as we and your readers know, is a field that is filled with vibrant discussion, exploration, and the kind of exciting controversy that keeps a discipline alive. None of this is reflected in “Freud Today.”
Instead, there are many pages written by the Educational Director (who has only recently added a note that the views expressed are his own) which purport to comment psychoanalytically on events of the day. The topics covered are a conglomeration of issues, the most problematic of which have to do with commentaries about the Middle East conflict. The writing, which we urge your readers to view for themselves, consists of putative, tendentious, convoluted “psychoanalytic interpretations” as if these might be the views of Freud were he examining these issues today.
However, what our Board has found most troublesome is the use of the imprimatur of the Freud Museum to covertly advance a particular political agenda, in a very sad and complex conflict, using the guise of Freud's work and the rubric of psychoanalytic interpretation and insight. We believe this is a cavalier misuse of psychoanalytic interpretive discipline and of Freud's deep and thoughtful contribution on many subjects. The manner and content of these web pages discredits our field and makes a mockery of the careful, painstaking work done by generations of psychoanalytic thinkers and clinicians who are especially cautious about making sweeping interpretations that may be misunderstood in a public context.
Jonathan H. Slavin, Ph.D.
President, Division of Psychoanalysis (39),
American Psychological Association on behalf of the Board of Directors
Relevant web urls: