Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe: The Rise and Fall of Freudianism - Part Two

   Chapter Four. Part Two of The Rise and Fall of Freudianism..


     Many of Freud's ideas don't sound too good to-day For instance he believed that women suffered from what he called "penis envy". All young men he said had what he called "An Oedipus Complex.". In other words subconsciously they wanted to kill their fathers and marry their mothers. Freud's claims for these complexes don't stand up to examination.
    In his lifetime Freud had his critics. In the city of Vienna, Freud who was a Jew, faced virulent anti-Semitism. And Freud spent most of his life in this city. Also other psychologists like the behaviourist  B.F. Skinner had no time for Freud's theories. Some Anglo-American philosophers doubted Freud's system from the very start.
    Still, by about the late 1950's Freud was seen as the greatest scientists of all time. Yet then came his downfall. Already in her massive 1949 book 'The Second Sex', the feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir had criticized Freud's psychology. In 1963, the American feminist Betty Friedan went after Freudian psychology in 'The Feminine Mystique'. Years later Gloria Steinem a very prominent feminist ridiculed Freud and Freudianism. "Freud was just a straight male chauvinist," a feminists told this author in the late 1970's. "His theories are just being used to oppress us women and keep us down."
   This was how many feminists were now seeing Freud. Freud's theories they asserted were just totally false ands oppressed women.
    Soon male critics appeared and started to trash Freud. Neuroscientists didn't believe Freud's view of the mind. Peter Swales, who at one time had worked for the Rolling Stones band, condemned Freud for his use of cocaine and his love affair with his sister-in-law. Frederick Crews an English professor at Berkeley University, first praised Freud but then turned on him. Crews's latest book called 'Freud: The Making of An Illusion' spends 746 pages charging Freud with one sin after another. Crews's book title echoes Freud's famous book on religion called 'The Future of An Illusion'. 
    Freud's reputation now is blurred. He died in England in exile in 1939, having fled Vienna to escape Hitler's troops who annexed Austria. So he's not here to defend himself. Yet others have. They point out that Freud's methods of healing patients was for the time relatively humane. He didn't use drugs on patients, carry out lobotomies or practice electric shock therapy treatments. Many others did when Freud started his practice. Others continued to do these sorts of treatments long after Freud had died.
     Then, too Freud did not molest, abuse, rape or stalk his patients. He just sat down and listened to them talk. Nor did he put his patients in hospitals where many patients just wasted away. Many women back then suffered from hysteria. This is a very rare disease today. Yet Freud did cure many of his patients. Of course Freud's claim to be practicing a science doesn't stand up to examination to-day. It also seems that he lied about his patients and his cures.
    Also some modern drugs do seem to work faster on mental problems than talking to a psychiatrist. A man who passed away a few years ago was an epileptic. "I had terrible explosions of anger," he once confessed. "But the drug Dilantin calmed me down." Modern pharmacology has helped soften but not cure not only epilepsy but also bi-polar syndrome and schizophrenia. Drugs work much faster than Freudian talk fests.
   Stanley Cavett is a philosopher who admires Freud. "Most philosophers in my tradition," he says, "relate to psychoanalysis with suspicion, habitually asking whether psychoanalysis deserves the title of a science. Still, says Cavett, "Freud achieved an unsurpassed horizon of knowledge about the human mind." Freudianism today is just one of 60 branches of psychology and Sigmund Freud no longer is praised by too many people as a paragon of intellect and a genius.
     Like many past visionaries his flame of inspiration has now burnt out. Or as post modernists might say, "This is just another Grand Narrative that no longer makes sense."