Freud : the making of an illusion

From the master of Freud debunkers, the book that definitively puts an end to the myth of psychoanalysis and its creator

Since the 1970s, Sigmund Freud's scientific reputation has been in an accelerating tailspin--but nonetheless the idea persists that some of his contributions were visionary discoveries of lasting value. Now, drawing on rarely consulted archives, Frederick Crews has assembled a great volume of evidence that reveals a surprising new Freud: a man who blundered tragicomically in his dealings with patients, who in fact never cured anyone, who promoted cocaine as a miracle drug capable of curing a wide range of diseases, and who advanced his career through falsifying case histories and betraying the mentors who had helped him to rise. The legend has persisted, Crews shows, thanks to Freud's fictive self-invention as a master detective of the psyche, and later through a campaign of censorship and falsification conducted by his followers.

A monumental biographical study and a slashing critique, Freud: The Making of an Illusion will stand as the last word on one of the most significant and contested figures of the twentieth century.

Author Notes

Frederick Crews is the author of many books, including the bestselling satire The Pooh Perplex and Follies of the Wise , which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award. He is also a professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, a longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books , and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

With his typical rapier wit and swaggering prose, Crews (Follies of the Wise) reveals that the emperor of psychoanalysis is wearing no clothes. In exhaustive and sometimes repetitious detail, he lays out a stunning indictment of Sigmund Freud. Crews illustrates Freud's tendency to rush to judgment by describing how, early on, Freud developed a promising but ultimately flawed slide-staining method; hurrying to report his findings, Freud failed to disclose the method's flaws, a pattern he would repeat throughout his life. During the 1880s, he tried, disastrously, to wean patients off of morphine with cocaine. With this treatment and the papers he wrote about it, Freud developed a habit of "failing to pursue an inquiry to its logical end" and "cutting as many corners as he could." In his later work, such as his Studies on Hysteria, Freud wrote case histories that read more like mystery stories than scientific reports; Crews intriguingly notes that Freud was a Sherlock Holmes devotee and suggests that the psychoanalyst may have been emulating the fictional sleuth. This drawn-out but fascinating biographical study paints a portrait of Freud as a man who cared more about himself than his patients and more about success than science. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

A thorough debunking of the Freud legend by an accomplished author and academic.In this elegant and relentless expos, New York Review of Books contributor Crews (Emeritus, English/Univ. of California; Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays, 2006, etc.) wields his razor-sharp scalpel on Freud's slavish followers, in particular, who did not want to see or who willfully redacted the sloppiness of Freud's research methods in order to "idealize him." The author sees a blackout of sorts by what he calls the Freudolatry, or the coterie of Freud apologists, from Anna Freud to many scholars down the line, who have limited access to his letters or correspondence between young Freud and his then-fiancee, Martha Bernays, between 1882 and 1886. This was the crucial period in the formation of his "seduction theory" and establishment as a specialist of nervous concerns among patients (largely well-off Jewish women) in Vienna. Having studied briefly with Jean-Martin Charcot of the Salptrire in Paris, Freud styled himself as an expert in hypnosis, Charcot's specialty in the treatment of hysteria, a catchall term for women's nervous disorders. In his Vienna practice, Freud's advocacy of the use of cocaine and other drugs as a panacea would bring him notoriety and even disgracee.g., using cocaine to "cure" his friend Ernst Fleischl von Marxow of morphine addiction. Eventually, Freud became dependent on cocaine and self-administered it throughout these years of feverish writing and developing his early psychoanalytic theories. Crews carefully digs through Freud's free-wheeling handling of facts, especially regarding the idea of "repressed memory of a sexual trauma"e.g., the case of Bertha Pappenheim, aka Anna O. The author also reveals how many other theorists before Freud were exploring the role of the unconscious in psychoneuroses, which contradicts his self-depiction as a pioneer in the field, as well as how his editors tweaked the record. Crews comes to bury Freud, not to praise him, and he does so convincingly. Impressively well-researched, powerfully written, and definitively damning. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Writing in 1922 to Sigmund Freud, the disgruntled husband of a woman undergoing psychoanalysis challenged the famous psychologist: Great Doctor, are you a savant or a charlatan? In this devastating exposé, Crews answers that question with stunning clarity. The marvel that Crews labors to illuminate is Freud's success in hiding his charlatanry while erecting a towering reputation as a visionary therapist who healed individual patients while ushering the entire world into a new era freed from stultifying inhibitions. Why has Freud's iconic cultural image endured even as psychiatric science has discredited his psychological theorizing? Readers soon realize that the Master cunningly rendered his new paradigm of the mind secure against empirical critique by transforming it into a cult faith sustained by fiercely loyal disciples. But Crews relentlessly shreds the deceptions that Freudians even now try to maintain. Trumpeted as a daring breakthrough, Freudianism incorporated concepts the Viennese physician borrowed from mentors he idolized, then betrayed. Framed as the distillation of lessons learned through successful treatments of many patients, Freud's psychoanalytic method, Crews argues forcefully, emerged with a thin and mendaciously edited case history. Disguised as objective truth, Freudianism bore the marks of its creator's deep-seated insecurities and guilt. This thorough dismantling of one of modernity's founding figures is sure to be met with controversy.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2017 Booklist

New York Review of Books Review

THE HOUSE OF GOVERNMENT: A Saga of the Russian Revolution, by Yuri Slezkine. (Princeton University, $39.95.) This panoramic history describes the tragic lives of Bolshevik revolutionaries who were swallowed up by the cause they believed in. The story is as intricate as any Russian novel. THE UNWOMANLY FACE OF WAR: An Oral History of Women in World War II, by Svetlana Alexievich. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. (Random House, $30.) This oral history, one of a series that won Alexievich the literature Nobel in 2015, charts World War II as seen by the Russian women who experienced it and disproves the assumption that war is "unwomanly." A LIFE OF ADVENTURE AND DELIGHT: Stories, by Akhil Sharma. (Norton, $24.95.) In eight haunting, revelatory stories about Indian characters, both in Delhi and in metropolitan New York, this collection offers a cultural exposé and a lacerating critique of a certain type of male ego. FREUD: The Making of an Illusion, by Frederick Crews. (Metropolitan/Holt, $40.) Crews's cohesive but slanted account presents, for the first time in a single volume, a portrait of Freud the liar, cheat, incestuous child molester and all-around nasty nut job. THE SEVENTH FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE, by Laurent Binet. Translated by Sam Taylor. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) Binet's playful detective novel reimagines the historical event of the literary theorist Roland Barthes's death. It's a burlesque set in a time when literary theory was at its cultural zenith; knowing, antic, amusingly disrespectful and increasingly zany. TO SIRI WITH LOVE: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines, by Judith Newman. (Harper/HarperCollins, $26.99.) Newman's tender, boisterous memoir strips the usual zone of privacy to edge into the world her autistic son occupies. In freely speaking her mind, Newman raises provocative questions about the intersection of autism and the neurotypical. IMPOSSIBLE VIEWS OF THE WORLD, by Lucy Ives. (Penguin Press, $25.) In this dark and funny first novel about a mystery in a museum, a young woman stuck in an entry-level job as her private life unravels waits for the baby boomers to pass from the scene. LIFE IN CODE: A Personal History of Technology, by Ellen Ullman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) A pioneering programmer discusses her career and the dangers the internet poses to privacy and civility. THE DESTROYERS, by Christopher Bollen. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) The heir to a construction empire goes missing on the Greek island of Patmos in Bollen's third novel, a seductive and richly atmospheric literary thriller in which wealth and luxury are inherent, but also inherently unstable. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

List of Illustrations	p. xiii
A Note on Sources	p. xv
Abbreviated Titles	p. xvii
Preface	p. 1
Part 1 Sigmund the Unready
1 Between Identities	p. 9
2 Getting By	p. 24
3 Forsaking All Others	p. 39
Part 2 The First Temptation
4 White Magic	p. 57
5 A Friend in Need	p. 74
6 The Wrong Discoverer	p. 91
7 Expert Judgments	p. 109
8 The Survivor	p. 127
9 Exit, Pursued	p. 140
Part 3 Blind submission
10 A French Connection	p. 157
11 The Travesty	p. 172
12 Attachment Therapy	p. 189
13 In Dubious Battle	p. 212
Part 4 Playing Doctor
14 Medicine Man	p. 239
15 Tending to Goldfish	p. 258
16 Lessons Taken and Applied	p. 275
17 Traumas on Demand	p. 293
Part 5 His Turn to Shine
18 Now or Never	p. 319
19 The Founding Deception	p. 339
20 Adjusting the Record	p. 361
21 Narrative Truth	p. 380
22 Arraying the Neuroses	p. 398
Part 6 Oft the Deep End
23 The Secret Sharer	p. 415
24 The Freudian Neuron	p. 435
25 Diminished Capacity	p. 452
26 Dire Therapy	p. 466
27 Self-Seduced	p. 486
28 The Breakthrough That Wasn't	p. 506
29 The Labyrinth of Reproaches	p. 519
Part 7 Little Big Man
30 Wishing Makes It So	p. 543
31 Sexual Healing	p. 563
32 The Unborn Avenger	p. 578
33 Girl Trouble	p. 590
34 A Law unto Himself	p. 617
35 Imposing His Will	p. 641
Appendix: Are We Being Freudian Yet?	p. 661
Notes	p. 667
Works Cited	p. 709
Acknowledgments	p. 731
Index	p. 733

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