As chair of the Wikipedia Project, a subcommittee of APsaA's Committee on Public Information, I've taken some time to assess the psychoanalysis content on Wikipedia, which defines itself as “a multilingual free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through a model of open collaboration.” Wikipedia is, however, famously susceptible to inaccuracy and, when it comes to controversial subjects, to bias.
Is Wikipedia biased and inaccurate when it comes to psychoanalysis? Should the psychoanalytic community care? The answer to both questions is unequivocally yes.
Why should the psychoanalytic community care what Wikipedia says? For one thing, when someone types “psychoanalysis” or “Sigmund Freud” into a Google search bar, the corresponding Wikipedia pages turn up as the number one hits. That means anyone seeking information about psychoanalysis from the world's leading search engine—that is, practically anyone who seeks information on psychoanalysis—is likely to pay a visit to these Wikipedia pages.
And many people do. In May 2016, during the week of Freud's 160th birthday, when he was the subject of a “Google Doodle,” the Sigmund Freud Wikipedia page was the fifth most visited page on the site, taking a backseat only to Captain America, Cinco de Mayo, Donald Trump, and Premier League football champion Leicester City F.C. Freud beat out Prince, who had recently died, and HBO's Game of Thrones.
As the world's first stop for information in the internet age, Wikipedia reaches a lot of people and shapes public discourse. Unfortunately, it can misinform the public about psychoanalysis, denying readers a clear and factual introduction to the field's important discoveries at a time when the world sorely needs its wisdom.
How does one measure the quality of Wikipedia's psychoanalysis content? It can be tricky, especially because Wikipedia is an ever-changing, living document. One method is to examine the pages at a given point in time and compare them to the information available in scholarly review articles and textbooks—the main sources Wikipedia editors are instructed to consult in order to reflect the current scientific consensus.
I conducted an investigation of the lede paragraphs of two Wikipedia pages on March 12, 2022: Sigmund Freud (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud) and Psychoanalysis (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis). I found significant departures from the way psychoanalysis is discussed in leading textbooks and review articles. Wikipedia's Sigmund Freud page lede, for example, features glaring omissions and misleading statements when compared to credible sources.
Facts about Freud that are commonplace in psychology and psychiatry texts but omitted from the Wikipedia page lede include:
Freud's invention of talking therapy in its modern form (the dominant form of psychotherapy today, cognitive-behavioral therapy, was created by psychoanalysts Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis)
Freud's postulation of thought-distorting defense mechanisms like denial, a concept in use across all of psychology and in everyday discourse
Freud's pioneering assertion of the importance of childhood attachments to an individual's mental organization and behavior as an adult
In addition, the article lede misleadingly characterizes psychoanalysis as being “in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice.” The citations present in the article lede do not support this misstatement and are decades out of date. There is support only for the claim that four-day-a-week classical psychoanalysis is practiced today less than it once was. And while it's true that psychoanalysts occupy fewer leadership positions in psychiatry than they used to, the insinuation that psychoanalytic ideas are no longer deeply integrated into current thinking and practice in psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience is false. The insinuation that psychoanalysis has been disproved is also false. More supportive evidence for psychoanalytic theory and efficacy exists now than ever before (see Mark Solms's 2018 article in BJPsych International entitled “The Scientific Standing of Psychoanalysis” for one recent review of this evidence), and there are no studies that disprove its core principles. None.
As a Wikipedia editor, I can attest that such misleading statements have been posted and defended by editors with a demonstrable agenda to discredit psychoanalysis. The editors introducing this bias onto Wikipedia are in the minority, and their misdeeds have been partly corrected by the majority in the last decade, but a small group of Freud-bashers have nonetheless violated Wikipedia's rules to accomplish their aims against scientific and editorial consensus. Hard to believe, perhaps, but true.
How do I know there's a history of anti-psychoanalytic bias on Wikipedia? Back in 2012, I suggested edits to the line in the “Freud” page lede about the decline of psychoanalysis. I met fierce resistance from an editor going by the pseudonym “Polisher of Cobwebs.” We became entangled in an edit war in which this editor prevented me from amending their assertion that psychoanalysis is no longer influential to psychiatry and psychology. Focused on the narrow aim of adding a half-sentence attesting to the continued relevance of psychoanalysis to psychology and psychiatry, I pursued Wikipedia's protocols for conflict resolution, presented my evidence, and ultimately won out. Another editor with administrative privileges overruled my opponent and included an acknowledgement of the influence of psychoanalysis on current practice. That amendment was there in the article lede in 2016 when more than 800,000 visitors came to the page. The amendment remains in place today.
It has since turned out that Polisher of Cobwebs was running a “sockpuppet” campaign to discredit psychoanalysis on Wikipedia (see ). (Sockpuppetry on Wikipedia is a form of fraudulence by which an editor signs up for multiple accounts under different names in order to evade disciplinary measures and/or to create false impressions of consensus for personal views.) Even though Polisher of Cobwebs has been blocked from editing Wikipedia, this editor has continued to edit multiple psychoanalysis pages under aliases, and as of today remains the author of over a tenth of the total content on the Freud page, according to the Wikimedia “Who Wrote That” tool. That's only under the name Polisher of Cobwebs and does not include content added under other aliases.
Another measure of bias is the use of “weasel words” on the Freud and psychoanalysis page ledes—vague or ambiguous language meant to insinuate a claim without committing the speaker to a specific position. For example, Wikipedia's Freud page lede currently says of psychoanalysis, “It thus continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate concerning its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or hinders the feminist case.” The therapeutic efficacy of all forms of psychotherapy, including CBT, are subject to continuing debate. At the same time, Wikipedia's page for cognitive behavioral therapy makes no mention of “debate,” let alone of the “extensive and highly contested” variety. These are redundant weasel words, in violation of Wikipedia's manual of style, and they sow doubt about psychoanalysis while citing publications that do not support this doubt. The citations listed at the end of the sentence calling psychoanalysis “highly contested” mention the history of controversy around psychoanalysis but otherwise go on to support psychoanalytic theory and efficacy!
It is not enough for volunteers to band together on an ad hoc basis. What is needed is steady and accountable custodianship of accurate psychoanalytic information on Wikipedia.
The psychoanalysis page lede at the time of writing this article contains similar weasel words without credible citations: “Psychoanalysis is a controversial discipline, and its effectiveness as a treatment has been contested.” Several months before I wrote this piece, the “psychoanalysis” page referred to psychoanalysis as a “pseudoscience” in contradiction to Wikipedia arbitration committee rulings (see wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:-Psychoanalysis). At the time of writing this, the page does not use that term.
The snapshot approach to assessing the quality of Wikipedia pages does not necessarily reflect their quality over time. There are ways, however, to do so. One way is to look at Wikipedia's own ratings of article quality. Articles that are “approaching (but not equaling) the quality of a professional encyclopedia” are rated “good articles” by Wikipedia editors. Neither the Sigmund Freud page nor the psychoanalysis page is rated good by the Wikipedia community.
Low ratings are typical for controversial Wikipedia pages, which inspire “edit warring” by activists. Researchers at Oxford, Rutgers, and two universities in Budapest have collaborated to develop an algorithm that measures the amount of edit warring on a given page. According to their study, “Psychoanalysis” was in the top 100 most controversial topics on Wikipedia, with a level of edit warring comparable to the page “Osama bin Laden”; see Yasseri et al. in Global Wikipedia: International and Cross-Cultural Issues in Online Collaboration (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). The bin Laden page, however, is semi-protected by a requirement that all editors of the page be autoconfirmed, a designation that the Wikipedia editor's account is at least four days old and has made at least ten previous edits. While the psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud pages have both been protected in the past, anyone can edit them at present without an autoconfirmed account.
On the one hand, bias against psychoanalysis on Wikipedia supports Freud's conviction that such bias was an inevitable consequence of psychoanalytic work, which challenges the forces of repression with distasteful psychological truths that we are driven to ignore. As early as 1895, before Freud coined the term “psychoanalysis,” he fretted that his observations on sexuality would cause discomfort and anxiety in his readers and provoke them to resist his claims. On the other hand, successes in combatting anti-psychoanalytic bias on Wikipedia contradict Freud's pessimistic conclusion in his 1916–1917 Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis that “nothing can be done against prejudices.” My anecdotal experience is that there are many more balanced,
fair-minded editors at work on Wikipedia's psychoanalysis pages than biased ones. Yet a few activist editors driven by biases leave a disproportionate imprint and undermine the reliability and usefulness of the pages.
Successes in combatting bias are hard to come by. It is even harder to prevent reversion and corruption. Both the American and the International Psychoanalytic Associations have repeatedly tried to corral members to clean up Wikipedia's misinformation about psychoanalysis, and both groups have encountered frustration. Volunteers burn out after encountering tenacious resistance from anti-psychoanalytic activists.
To continue making progress, the psychoanalytic community must rethink its attitude about Wikipedia in particular and public information in general. It is not enough for volunteers to band together on an ad hoc basis. What is needed is steady and accountable custodianship of accurate psychoanalytic information on Wikipedia. Dr. James Heilman, a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board and a leader of WikiProject Medicine, has encouraged physicians to regard the preser vation of medical accuracy on Wikipedia as a duty to the public. Dr. Cas Liber, a psychiatrist and stalwart contributor to WikiProject Medicine, has done fair-minded work on Wikipedia's psychoanalysis pages. Psychoanalysts should adopt the same attitude by expanding the public health dimension of their work and assuming custodianship of Wikipedia's psychoanalysis pages. That does not mean fortifying the pages against criticism, but ensuring an accurate and unbiased picture of psychoanalysis and its history.
To that end, I would like to see APsaA, IPA, and other bodies underwrite a grant-supported fellowship devoted to correcting inaccuracies, lies, and misconceptions about psychoanalysis, whether on Wikipedia, social media, or in the news. A fellowship would support the time and accountability necessary for long-term conflict resolution on Wikipedia and for maintaining Wikipedia accuracy in the future. TAP readers who are interested in volunteering for the Wikipedia Project are also welcome. Editing Wikipedia is not hard. It just requires attention and persistence.
We cannot shrink from the task. Allowing biased critics to control the narrative about psychoanalysis today is just as dangerous as allowing anti-vaxxers to control the narrative about Covid-19. Denial has become a public health crisis in its own right and misinformation that casts unfounded doubt on psychoanalysis, the science of denial, undermines us all in our efforts to combat the dangers of irrational emotion in the public sphere. Wikipedia is a freely accessible point of entry to all the good, necessary, and important work our profession offers: a framework for understanding the unconscious, transference and dreams, the fundamental psychotherapeutic strategy of alleviating suffering through increased self-awareness, and so much more. Let's make sure that door stays open—even when biased critics try to close it.
Austin Ratner, M.D., is author of four books, including The Psychoanalyst's Aversion to Proof . He chairs the Wikipedia Project for APsaA's Committee on Public Information and is a founding board member of the Psychotherapy Action Network.