Wit and its relation to the master
Allen was inspired (by a passing joke of mine) to send me a line of Frank Cioffi‘s, from his review of Sulloway’s Freud: Biologist of the Mind (1979):
Material has been accumulating for some time that the account of the birth
and early growth of the psychoanalytic movement which derives from Freud
and Ernest Jones, and has been so often repeated, bears little relation to
reality. In an ideal world this would have knocked several more nails in
Freud’s coffin, but since it is so widely believed that he is not in it,
having climbed out on the third day, it has had little discernable effect.
I liked that so much he sent another, this one from a review of Fisher and
Greenberg’s survey of studies on Freud’s theses, The Scientific
Credibility of Freud’s Theories and Therapy (1977) in the THES:
What these studies really show is that there are psychologists who would
sooner part with their own penises than with the concept of castration
anxiety.
So Freud had something in common with Falstaff. Schön.
Going from the sceptical (Frank Cioffi) to the credulous (Howard Gardner) here is Gardner in the review of Peter Kramer’s book on Freud to which Ophelia linked on B&W:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/05/AR2007010500073.html
“No reader of Kramer alone would appreciate the extent to which Freud airs doubts, responds to criticisms, admits his changes of mind and presents extensive transcripts that readers can judge for themselves.”
Now Gardner is one of the most famous psychologists in the States. He is Professor of Cognition and Education Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. I quote from his university webpage: He has received honorary degrees from 20 colleges and universities, including institutions in Ireland, Italy, and Israel… The author of over 20 books translated into 23 languages, and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences.
So how come when it comes to Freud he writes such nonsense? The only thing that Gardner can possibly mean by Freud’s “extensive transcripts” are the case histories, in which Freud told readers precisely what he wanted them to know, and in which it is frequently impossible to discern what came from the patient and what came from Freud. And on this basis Gardner thinks we can judge for ourselves! Well, in a sense we can – as long as we read Freud with our brains in gear.
Evidently Gardner hasn’t read Patrick Mahony’s book on the “Rat Man”, in which, as he reported in a letter to the American Journal of Psychiatry, he “pointed out Freud’s intentional confabulation and documented the serious discrepancies between Freud’s day-to-day process notes of the treatment and his published case history of it.” (Freud destroyed all his other case notes, so we’ll never know the extent this was the same with his other famous case histories; though for the one case for which the patient provided information later, the Wolf Man expressed his scepticism about Freud’s main analytic claims, and derided Freud’s claim to have cured his somatic symptoms.)
As for Gardner’s writing of “the extent to which Freud airs doubts, responds to criticisms, admits his changes of mind”, he seems to have swallowed Freud’s rhetoric whole. I am genuinely puzzled that psychologists, of all people, can read Freud and not see the games he plays with his readers. Gardner should try reading Stanley Fish’s dissection of the “Wolf Man” case history, “Withholding the Missing Portion: Power, Meaning and Persuasion in Freud’s ‘The Wolf Man’.” (At one point Fish, in relation to Freud’s persuasive devices, describes his achieving “a virtuoso level of performance”.)* Or he could try Chapter 12 in my own *Seductive Mirage*, with the title: “Techniques of Persuasion”.
The question remains: How is it that someone of Gardner’s intellectual eminence, a psychologist to boot, can read Freud so credulously, and even come up with the manifest absurdity that Freud presented us with “transcripts” that enable us to judge for ourselves the validity of his alleged clinical findings?
* Fish, S. “Withholding the Missing Portion: Power, Meaning and Persuasion in Freud’s ‘The Wolf Man’.” In *The Trial(s) of Psychoanalysis* (1987), ed. F. Meltzer, pp. 183-209. An abbreviated version is in *Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend* (1998), ed. F. C. Crews, pp. 186-199.
Where’s Fred Crews when we need him???
How is it that someone of Gardner’s intellectual eminence, a psychologist to boot, can read Freud so credulously …?
To that I would add: how is it that anybody – regardless of their ‘intellectual eminence’ – takes Freud seriously? For even if one treats Freud’s entire theoretical edifice as a ‘black box’ that is beyond one’s ken or intellectually too demanding, psychoanalysis fails as therapy. Psychotherapy is simply not evidenced-based – a point that differential psychologist Hans Eysenck made years ago. As Eysenck wrote (1986):
I have always taken it for granted that the obvious failure of Freudian therapy to significantly improve on spontaneous remission or placebo treatment is the clearest proof we have of the inadequacy of Freudian theory, closely followed by the success of alternative methods of treatment, such as behavior therapy.
It is interesting to compare the falsifiability of Freudian psychotherapy (bad science) with the unfalsifiability of Freudian psychoanalysis (non-science):
“Not only are they [ they = the trinity of ego, superego and id – CC] speculations of a kind not amenable to empirical validation, their functions are so imprecisely delineated that they can be employed in almost arbitrary fashion to provide support for virtually any theoretical formulation.”
(Allen Esterson, as quoted in Webster’s ‘Why Freud was Wrong’, page 293)
Perhaps a two-pronged strategy is the most effective method of debunking the Viennese imposter: Allen Esterson, Webster et al, for educated people (e.g. those who have read their Popper) and Hans Eysenck for the general public. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to recognise a damp squib when you see one.