From B&W’s Letters page, a discussion of Freud, Webster, Masson, the unconscious, the seduction theory. Allen Esterson is the author of Seductive Mirage: an Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud.
Richard R. Warnotck, 25/09/2005
Understanding history may not be absolutely essential to understanding psychology but it is at least very helpful. The truth is that Webster gets some of Freud’s ideas just wrong, so his arguments are directed not so much against Freud as against his caricature of Freud. Consider the issue of ‘unconscious emotions’.
Here is Webster, page 250:
“One of the central objections to Freud’s methodology, however, is that by positing the existence of an Unconscious he effectively deepens the very mysteries which he claims to … Read the rest