Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront A Legend

British Medical Journal, April 3, 1999 by David Healy

Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront A Legend Ed Frederick Crews Viking Press, 20 [pounds sterling], pp 301 ISBN 0 670 87221 0 Rating: ***

It started in the 1970s. At first, the outcome seemed unpredictable. The latest high tech weapons pitched against a wily adversary with mysterious weapons of unknown lethality. But in the end the result was clear. Repeated attacks by Roazen, Ellenberger, Swales, Sulloway, Cioffi, Masson, and others put the issue beyond doubt. Before the end it was almost like a turkey shoot. Fatefully, perhaps, the victors did not press home their advantage to the full. They withdrew, leaving the defeated analysts to reposition themselves. Some of the analysts' efforts to regroup led to their containment behind the sanctions of evidence based medicine, legal precedents, protocols, and guidelines, which established substantial "no fly" zones. An unsatisfactory outcome for some, notably Frederick Crews, who feared that, notwithstanding the conclusive outcome to the first engagements, a source of dangerous contagion remained intact.

The latest hostilities were triggered by a successful sanctions busting manoeuvre. Ever resourceful, the analysts recently managed to get the Library of Congress to support an exhibition on "the importance of psychoanalytic ideas" and "the enduring discoveries of [Freud's] revolutionary genius." This has led to a series of stinging replies, one of which is Unauthorized Freud. On one level, there can be little doubt about the outcome this time round. Unauthorized Freud contains as many "Crews missiles" as were launched in the original conflict, consisting as it does of a selection of reprints from the works of Freud's better known critics of the most telling historical investigations of his actual therapeutic endeavours, the most incisive logical analyses of his premises, and the most detailed critiques of how the analytic regime manages to hang on to power. For precision invective and clinical finishing, this volume is hard to beat.

And yet there can be room for uneasiness. Crews is in breach of several technicalities. He attributes the recovered memory movement to Freudianism, whereas it is essentially the antithesis of psychoanalysis. He focuses almost exclusively on the clinical domain and fails to address the new terrain on which the analysts have regrouped, that of literature and the humanities. Anyone, it seems, who is not for his position, anyone who is prepared to concede that analytic approaches may have some merit (he cites Micale and Showalter), is against him. This surely betrays an inability to muster a broad based coalition for further hostilities.

It is hard to avoid the feeling that it would have been more useful to see this arsenal targeted against the biobabble and its institutional underpinnings that has succeeded the psychobabble of yesteryear. Before the end, one longs for a celebration of the glories of analytic culture and its contribution to the dynamics of modernity and postmodernity. This is what Anthony Elliott's Freud 2000 sets out to provide. Unfortunately, this book, despite a number of stimulating contributions, will largely appeal only to insiders. The moment calls for an engagement of those who don't already speak the language, those who live outside the ghetto. It calls for efforts to bridge the divide. These chapters will speak only to those who are already listening. The standoff continues.

Reviews are rated on a 4 star scale (4=excellent)

David Healy, director, North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, Bangor