Frederick Crews' "Freud: The Making of an Illusion" offers a critical biography of Sigmund Freud, challenging the traditional narrative surrounding his life and work. Crews meticulously examines Freud's personal life, professional career, and theoretical contributions, presenting a revisionist perspective that questions Freud's scientific rigor and ethical conduct. The book delves into Freud's early life, his use of cocaine, and his relationships with colleagues and patients, revealing complexities and contradictions often overlooked in previous biographies. Crews' analysis challenges the established 'Freud legend,' prompting a reassessment of Freud's legacy and the enduring impact of psychoanalysis.
In this monumental intellectual biography, Frank J. Sulloway demonstrates that Freud's most creative inspirations derived significantly from biology. Sulloway analyzes the political aspects of the complex myth of Freud as a psychoanalytic hero and shows how Freud's theories were influenced by biological assumptions and ideas, particularly those of Charles Robert Darwin. The book exposes historical distortions and myths surrounding Freud's work, providing a new and comprehensive understanding of Freud and the origins of psychoanalysis.
The figure of Sigmund Freud has captivated the Western imagination like few others. One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Studies on Hysteria, the good doctor from Vienna continues to stir controversy in institutions, academic circles, and nuclear households across the world.
Perhaps Freud’s sharpest and most adamant critic, Frederick Crews has been debating Freud’s legacy for over thirty years. His latest work, Freud: The Making of an Illusion (Picador, 2018) challenges us with an extensive psychological profile of the legend here revealed as scam artist. What some analysts might argue to be a 750 page character assassination, Crews maintains is simply a recitation of facts which leaves readers to draw their own conclusions. One might wonder if the story of facts that is conveyed is not itself a counter myth.
Was Freud a megalomaniacal, greedy, cocaine-addled opportunist and psychoanalysis a pseudoscience that has reigned tyrannically over twentieth century thought? Making use of Freud’s extensive letters to Martha Bernays, Crews paints a “damning portrait” (Esquire) of a money hungry, adulterous, and uncaring man.
How can this portrait be reconciled with the radically meaningful and deeply transformative process many of us know psychoanalysis to be? Is the tyranny of rationality preferable to the tyranny of myth? Does the unmaking of the myth of the man undo the gift of his work?
In this interview Crews responds to questions of what it means to have an empirical attitude, how we should “test” the process of healing, what’s so tempting about Freud, and what should become of psychoanalysis today. Meticulously researched, the Crews of the Freud wars is back again, and he’s going in for the kill shot.
Cassandra B. Seltman is a writer, psychoanalyst, and researcher in NYC. cassandraseltman@gmail.com
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