Freud was flawed but he continues to influence thinking in almost every area of human endeavour, says Frank Tallis Why it’s time to rehabilitate Freud F ew fi gures have been attacked and vili fi ed more than Freud. Psychoanalysis has been declared intellectually bankrupt, and Freud’s critics have accused him of being a
bulbs. Similarly, psychoanalysis has powered intellectual life well beyond the clinic. It has in fl uenced thinking in almost every area of human endeavour – literature, art, fi lm, music, Shakespeare studies, advertising, law and anthropology to name but a few. Psychoanalysis is also curiously inexhaustible, insofar as it provides explanations for distinctly modern phenomena. Freud’s essay on The Uncanny explains why we feel uneasy in the presence of certain ‘humanoid’ robots. It is routinely referenced by roboticists. Psychoanalysis liberalised attitudes to sex. The origins of our ‘enlightened’ acceptance of sexual diversity can be traced back to Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality . Unlike his contemporaries, when Freud wrote about sex he avoided lapsing into prudish Latin, and his German was inclusive. Sex is personal, not medical or anatomical, and he resisted the idea of sexual deviance. As far as Freud was concerned, we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, ‘perverts’. When it comes to sex there is no such thing as normal. As far as we know Freud never formed a homosexual relationship, but he freely acknowledged experiencing homoerotic feelings. Influence Today, even those who don’t consider themselves Freudians use Freudian language and think like Freudians. When we intend to say one thing and say something more revealing instead we know that we have made a ‘Freudian slip’. We accuse others of being ‘defensive’, of being ‘narcissists’, and use ‘anal’ as an insult. We have ‘egos’ and accept that most of our mental life is ‘unconscious’. Motivation can be obscure, and behaviour must be ‘interpreted’. Sometimes what people omit to say expresses more than what people do say – and so on. Freud’s detractors hoped to relegate him to the status of a historical footnote. However, even at its height Freud bashing never managed to exclude Freud from the broader, cultural conversation. His in fl uence simply shifted from science to the humanities. Writers experimented with Freudian dream worlds, fi lms featured characters with Freudian ‘complexes’, and the popular depiction of psychotherapy – a bearded therapist seated behind a patient lying on a couch – remained stubbornly psychoanalytic. Eventually Freud bashers had to concede that Freud was here to stay, and they consoled themselves with
studies cannot be trusted. They are, at least in part, convenient fi ctions. Freud was – and still is – an easy target, and from the 1950s onwards Freud bashers became increasingly con fi dent. Psychoanalysis was an ine ff ective treatment based on a wrong-headed system of thought, and Freud the man was ‘outed’ as a slippery and suspect character. Freud was perceived increasingly as a sexual monomaniac whose ideas, although inspirational for artists like the surrealists, were of no scienti fi c value. However, this characterisation of Freud is predicated on partial rather than whole truths. Talking cure Compared to the medical treatments favoured by Freud’s contemporaries – an electri fi ed brush pushed down the throat to heal a nervous cough, for example – psychoanalysis was a humane and compassionate intervention; a talking cure that catalysed the development of many other forms of modern psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis is not just a clinical ‘method’. It is also an account of how the mind works – a theory of development, a behavioural ‘science’ and a way of thinking about the world, informed by a unique synthesis of neurology, Darwinism, German romantic philosophy, classical literature and archaeological metaphor. Freud once compared psychoanalysis to electricity. Electricity can be used in medical settings, for example, to power an X-ray machine. But electricity is not categorically medical. It can also power radios and light
child rapist, a plagiarist, an unfaithful husband and a liar. He has even been accused of coming close to committing a murder. Yet Freud’s loyal followers – a constituency that expanded in the fi rst half of the 20th century and shrank in the second half – have always maintained that he was an outstanding thinker. The public have been asked to choose between two Freuds – the genius and the fraud. Biographies of Freud still exemplify this polarised view, being exercises in either hagiography or iconoclasm. All of which makes it extremely di ffi cult for those with a general interest in Freud and the mind to reach any reliable conclusions. Criticism of Freud has been so vituperative it has acquired a special designation: ‘Freud energy from many sources, but anti-Semitism (Freud’s books were burned by the Nazis), academic turf wars and the activities of certain antagonistic and ambitious personalities such as the psychologist Hans Eysenck are arguably the most signi fi cant. Although Freud bashing is biased, it is not entirely unjusti fi ed. Many of Freud’s ideas are likely to raise eyebrows – penis envy? – and he didn’t always tell the truth. He frequently distorted facts to fi t his theories, and his case bashing’. This class of immoderate and personal criticism of Freud has drawn
28 THERAPY TODAY
MAY 2024
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter maker