Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis Tracing Freud’s essentially religious personality to his childhood, Webster shows how the founder of psychoanalysis allowed his messianic dreams to shape the ”science” he created and to lead him ever deeper into a labyrin
| TITLE | : | Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis |
| AUTHOR | : | |
| RATING | : | 4.65 (399 Votes) |
| ASIN | : | 0465095798 |
| FORMAT TYPE | : | Hardcover |
| NUMBER of PAGES | : | 688 Pages |
| PUBLISH DATE | : | 1995-09-07 |
| GENRE | : |
In this engrossing new study of Sigmund Freud’s life and work, Richard Webster has set out to provide a clear answer to the controversies that have raged for a century around one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. Tracing Freud’s essentially religious personality to his childhood, Webster shows how the founder of psychoanalysis allowed his messianic dreams to shape the ”science” he created and to lead him ever deeper into a labyrinth of medical error. Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, Why Freud Was Wrong is destined to become a classic work.
Editorial : From Publishers Weekly In a formidable critique of Freud's theories and modern psychoanalytic practice, English journalist Webster argues that Freud's mentor, French neurologist Jean Charcot, misdiagnosed as traumatic hysteria what were actually cases of injury-related brain damage and epilepsy. Misled by this error, Freud, in Webster's opinion, himself misdiagnosed many of his early cases, seeking to explain physical ailments or illnesses with recourse to patients' childhood emotional traumas. To Webster, psychoanalysis, for all its rationalism and professed secularism, is a "crypto-theological system," a modernized reworking of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, sexual realism and restraint. He portrays Freud as the founder of a messianic movement that placed at its core a confessional ritual: the therapy session. Freud's hero-worship of crackpot Berlin physician Wilhelm Fliess, his
The book comes out of English lit, not science. I was looking for a fact-based take-down of Freudian pseudoscience, but decided in chapter one this book wasn't for me. In one of the concluding chapters, Webster makes a most eloquent case for the necessity of art and artmaking in a materialist/scientific age. I enjoyed it. I found this to be a revelatory book. It's a great read. I believe there may be worthwhile material in the book, but it's padded with English lit prattle.. Freud, not having the luxury of 20/20 hindsight, incorporated these ideas into his theories. Freud, was an advocate of the Cartesian ideas so integral to the development of this age which now remains dominant. The author establishes that Freud was over-ambitious, but then it veers into detailed speculation about why Freud was so driven. For this reason, reading a book bashing Freud did not in any way offend me. It is
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