The Perennial Freud: Method versus Myth and the Mischief of Freud Bashers

Nowadays Freud bashing is not only à la mode, in certain circles it has become de rigueur. Once a name of respect, Freud has become a name of ridicule. But like any scientific method, body of knowledge, and therapeutic procedure, psychoanalysis should be subjected to critical scrutiny. The recent crop of hostile Freud critics may have filled a vacuum left for decades by a psychoanalytic establishment which, like the Church of yesteryear, shunned all forms of criticism intramural and extramural. A central guiding idea of this essay is the distinction between the psychoanalytic method and psychoanalytic doctrines, hypotheses, and theories. This distinction has been invariably confused by both Freud's adherents and Freud's attackers. Moreover, arguments ad rem have been conflated with arguments ad hominem. A socially responsible criticism must seek to be constructive and not merely destructive. It is the latter course that was taken by the various hostile critics that came to be labeled as Freud bashers. The time has come to take a stand against the more egregious attacks on Freud and the psychoanalytic method.     

In defense of sabina spielrein

Abstract

Of all the master-disciple encounters, the most fruitful and fateful was the one between Freud and Jung, ending in a painful parting of the ways, all depicted in the Freud/Jung letters. In some quarters the Freud/Jung split is explained by the old recipe of cherchez la femme, blaming Sabina Spielrein for causing trouble between the two men. In addition, Spielrein was “diagnosed” as schizophrenic. Both the blame and the diagnosis are false. The record shows, as amply reflected in the Freud/Jung correspondence and in the letters exchanged by each of them with Spielrein (as well as Spielrein's diary), that the relations between the two men were not complicated by Spielrein. New confirmatory evidence comes from letters released by the Jung family at a later date and the recently published clinical chart of Spielrein with details about her family background, her stay at the Burgholzli Asylum, and her condition at discharge. The cumulative effect of the evidence leads to a reappraisal of the Jung/Spielrein love affair. As an aside, the Freud/Jung split had other causes. Evolving against the backdrop of the rupture with Adler, it had to do with disagreements over matters of doctrine, specifically, the sexual etiology of neuroses and psychoses, and was fought out in the arena of interpreting Schreber.     

Sabina Spielrein's Siegfried and other myths: facts versus fictions

Sabina Spielrein's life events became known to posterity through a private correspondence with Freud and Jung, and through her diaries. Based on a misinterpretation of the documents, a myth, a fiction, was created about an alleged sexual affair with Jung and a case of misconduct during treatment. Another myth was that her relationship with Jung was a cause of the historic break-up between Freud and Jung. The biographical facts described by the author in a number of publications show that her treatment ended when she left the hospital to become Jung's student in the medical school, a situation with its own ethical rules. Furthermore, the alleged “scandal” was no public matter: it turned out to be no more than a personal quarrel. Before, during, and after that turbulent episode, Spielrein and Jung maintained a long and tender friendship and correspondence that included sharing creative ideas that enriched psychoanalysis. In these exchanges, a special role was played by the myth of Siegfried and other themes in Wagner's operas.     

Omnipotence,or the Delusional Aspect of Ideology,in Relation to Love,Power, and Group Dynamics

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Wilhelm Reich Revisited: The role of ideology in character analysis of the individual versus character analysis of the masses and the Holocaust

Abstract

One of the most controversial members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and Freud’s intimate for many years, Reich is known not only for his seminal contributions to therapeutic and social psychoanalysis in his 1933 classic Character analysis, but also for his notoriety as a discoverer of an energy he named orgone. This paper is devoted to Reich the psychoanalytic sociologist and reformer, with special prominence given to his other, now somewhat forgotten, 1933 book The mass psychology of Fascism.