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Cultivators Forum: English Language and Literature

June 2013, Vol. 2, pp. 1-14
Department of English
Da-Yeh University, Taiwan R.O.C.

The Unscientific Nature of the Freudian Psychoanalytical

System
Szu-Yi Lin
Tungnan University, Taiwan R.O.C.
szuyi.lin@msa.hinet.net

Abstract
Sigmund Freud, the originator of psychoanalysis and long considered the father of
modern psychology, has had an immense influence on literary criticism as well as other
fields of modern thought. Yet, when we look through his theories we find absolutely no
evidence for them. Many of his ideas, moreover, even though he created the myth that
they are highly original, were derived from sources to whom he later withheld credit. His
lack of integrity in reporting the results of his case histories, as well what he seems to
report accurately and without artifice, force one to conclude not only that he seldom got
the therapeutic results he had hoped for, but that his theories were seldom confirmed by
his patients. Consequently, instead of changing his theories to fit their testimony, he
shaped his interpretations of their testimony to fit his theories. He justified these
distortions by arguing that patients consciously resist giving evidence of thoughts that
society has made them feel they are not supposed to have. Thus, he concludes, their overt
accounts of present thoughts and past experiences are not to be trusted. Instead, the
therapist must often discount what is said and infer what remains unspoken. Not only
this, he must do everything possible to get at the truth, which, Freud seemed to fail to
realize, was based almost entirely on his own conjecture and preconceived theoretical
notions. This led him, in fact, to bully his patients and even accuse them of thoughts
which they assuredly never had. To cite Webster: Not only does he frequently treat his
patients as tough they are deliberately and maliciously attempting to conceal the true
facts from him, but on a significant number of occasions he appears to decide in advance
that his patient is guilty of a particular action, thought or desire, and then to interpret
replies to his intensive questioning in such a way that his suspicion is substantiated
(199). Finally, Freud handled all criticism of his ideas in the same light. Thus, if someone
did not agree with them, it could only mean that that person was besieged by the same
unconscious resistance that plagued his patients.
It is time that Freuds theories are seen for what they are: as incapable of scientific
and clinical confirmation and therefore unverifiable. Thus, it is time that literature

Szu-Yi Lin/ Cultivators Forum: English Language and Literature 2 (2013) 1-14

stopped being viewed from a psychoanalytical perspective.

Key words: Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalysis, Original, Patients, Truth

Freud was a fraud. Yet, as the inventor of the therapeutic method called
psychoanalysis, he has often been referred to as the father of modern psychology.
Moreover, for decades now, psychoanalytical criticism has been taught as one of the main
approaches to the interpretation of literature. One of the best known and most often used
texts in courses on literary criticism is still, I believe, Hazard Adamss Critical Theory
Since Plato, which, in its introductory remarks to Freuds Creative Writers and
Daydreaming, notes that The influence of Freud on modern literature, critical practice,
and literary theory has been so immense and varied that no small selection from his work
can begin to represent that influence. his speculations have had an immense influence,
and virtually no modern critic has not been touched by them (748, 749). Included in the
1971 publication we also find essays, written as early as 1941 and 1945, by the noted
critic, Lionel Trilling, who discusses Freuds views of literature and the artist. Although
he disagrees with Freuds early remarks that the artist is a neurotic who tries to escape
from reality by means of substitute gratifications, Trilling contends that it is possible
to say of Freud that he ultimately did more for our understanding of art than any other
writer since Aristotle (Adams 959).1 In Freud and Literature, his companion piece in
this compendium, Trilling opens by stating that The Freudian psychology is the only
systematic account of the human mind which, in point of subtlety and complexity, of
interest and tragic power, deserves to stand beside the chaotic mass of psychological
insights which literature has accumulated through the centuries (Adams 949). He ends
his essay by claiming that:
The Freudian man is a creature of far more dignity and far more interest
than the man which any other modern system has been able to conceive.
Despite popular belief to the contrary [sic], man, as Freud conceives him, is
not to be understood by any simple formula (such as sex) but is rather an
inextricable tangle of culture and biology. And not being simple, he is not
simply good; he has, as Freud says somewhere, a kind of hell within him from
which rise everlastingly the impulses which threaten his civilization. (Adams
958)
In his final remark he suggests that the Freudian view is a view which does not narrow
and simplify the human world for the artist but, on the contrary, opens and complicates
it. Curiously, Adams did not see fit to retain Trillings essays for the revised edition
(1992) of his work, though he does retain Freuds essay and his same commentary on it,
while adding an essay by Lacan, who was not included in the earlier edition.
Turning to another popularly used text, A Handbook of Critical Approaches to
Literature, we find that the psychoanalytical approach occupies a prominent place among
those presented. And though the authors recognize that most of the abuses and
misunderstandings of the modern psychological approach to literature have derived from
1

From Art and Neurosis, taken from The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society, Viking Press, 1945.

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its association with psychoanalysis, and that these abuses have generated such a
widespread distrust of the whole approach that conservative scholars and teachers of
literature have rejected all psychological criticism as pretentious nonsense, these same
authors go on to present Freuds theories, confident, no doubt, that a proper
understanding of them will preclude any such abuses. They open their presentation with
the following statements: The foundation of Freuds contribution to modern psychology
is his emphasis on the unconscious aspects of the human psyche. A brilliant creative
genius, Freud provided convincing evidence, through his many carefully recorded case
studies, that most of our actions are motivated by psychological forces over which we
have very limited control (Guerin 118). Later, in discussing feminist criticism, they note
the importance of Freud and his revisionist, Lacans, theories (which place women at the
center of their versions of psychology) for the feminists, who seem to be unaware that
women would be much better off without them.
What is most astounding about all this activity surrounding Freud and his theories is
that psychoanalysis is now being recognized by more and more doctors, therapists and
scholars as a pseudo-science, or even a religion, which, from its inception, has sought not
to enhance knowledge, but to stifle it, not to accept challenges to its underlying theories
in the true spirit of science, but to banish them, not to accept dissidents, but to
excommunicate them. To dispel the notion that these remarks are an exaggeration, one
need only look back at Freuds own character, his theories and therapeutic practice, how
he shaped the psychoanalytic movement into a personal cult, and his attitude towards
those early disciples-turned-heretics, such as Adler and Jung, who dared to disagree with
some of his central ideas.
Freuds character as a man has been held up as an example of courage and integrity
in the face of often hostile criticism. He has been seen as a staunch hero, a lonely prophet,
the intrepid voyager, daring to strike out on his own in his exploration of the dark regions
of the mind and fearless in his determination to go where no other traveler dared go
before. But these images arose largely because Freud worked so hard to create them. In
the words of Richard Webster, as some recent scholars have pointed out, this myth of the
hero was one which Freud himself consciously created, sometimes by destroying or
suppressing the evidence which might conflict with it (13).
When we look at all the evidence, we see that in his early days Freud, far from being
the original theorist for which he has so often been taken, became inordinately attached to
certain thinkers, credulously accepting and importing their ideas even when fallacious,
and building his system of psychoanalysis on them; that he reshaped, distorted and even
fabricated statements made by patients in the case histories which he wrote up for
publication and which were used as exemplars of psychological brilliance and models of
the psychoanalytical method in the development of the movement; finally, that he came
to fear challenges to his chief theories to such an extent that he was intolerant of them.
As for the idea that Freud was a highly original thinker, this is a myth. The
potentially negative influence of the mind on the body, for example, is a concept that
goes all the way back to Hippocrates and Galen, who recognized that emotions can
sometimes play a pathogenic role in the onset of illness. But it was characteristic of Freud
to believe that ideas which were generations old had stemmed from himself, and to get so
intellectually excited about a theory, whether his own or someone elses, as to elevate it
to the status of a universal cure with the potential to heal all mankind of its nervous

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illnesses. Regarding Freuds famous talking cure, this originated with his elder
colleague, Josef Breuer, to whom Freud himself rightfully gives credit for this innovation.
Freud did develop it, however, though not in a way that was fortunate either for his own
patients or those of the many therapists he influenced, as we shall see. In any case, the
idea of revealing ones innermost secrets to a professional whose task it is to relieve ones
ills, in part by lightening the burden of having to keep those secrets bottled up in ones
self, is not new, either. For, centuries ago, the Catholic Church institutionalized the role of
confession, by which the sinner confesses his (her) sins to a priest, who, as Christs
instrument on earth, has the power to absolve him of his guilt. (We will again turn to the
connection between the roles of psychoanalysis and confession later in this essay.)
Moreover, in a series of publications that appeared from 1864 to 1895, the Viennese
physician, Moritz Benedikt, claimed that the cause of many cases of hysteria and other
illnesses was a painful secret, mostly pertaining to sexual life. His further claim was that
patients could be cured by the confession of pathogenic secrets (Webster 109). Even
earlier, in 1763, in a medical treatise a certain Hieronymus Gaub had pointed to the
harmful effects of both expressed and suppressed anger and grief, and of unrequited love.
Thus, of grief he says that when it remains seated firmly within and is for a long time
repressed and fostered, the body no less than the mind is eaten up and destroyed (in
Webster, 110). From a certain Gustav Fechner, who studied not only physics but
metaphysics, described the nature of angels in one of his works, and became convinced
that God had chosen him to solve all the worlds riddles through the help of a universal
spiritual law, Freud derived a number of concepts. These included the principle of the
conservation of energy a key principle of psychoanalysis, the principle of pleasureunpleasure, and the principle of repetition. To quote Henri Ellenberger, who has written
extensively on the history of psychiatry: A large part of the theoretical framework of
psychoanalysis would hardly have come into being without the speculations of the man
whom Freud called the great Fechner (in Webster, 175). To Freud, he may have been
the great Fechner, but I suspect that few consider him worth reading today.
In fact, many of the ideas with which we credit Freud were already current in the
nineteenth century, including the concept of resistance. Thus, Oscar Wilde, in his novel
The Picture of Dorian Gray (published in 1891), has Lord Henry say to Dorian: We are
punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and
poisons us. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your
soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what
monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
Of course, no one works, nor should work in a vacuum, and Freud was free to soak
up influence whenever and wherever he chose. What is disturbing in terms of the
immense influence that the himself exerted, however, is that he often failed to
acknowledge his sources, fostering instead the myth that he was the originator of many of
the ideas he had derived from others. Yet, even more unfortunate is the fact that, to serve
as foundations for his central theories, he adopted ideas from science (e.g., from Fechner,
Charcot, Fliess, et al.) now unaccepted by scientists in general. Freuds idea of infantile
sexuality, for example, was adopted from his friend and correspondent, Wilhelm Fliess,
who also, after observing the effects of cocaine, became convinced there was a special
link between the nose and the genitals, and who, like Freud, saw masturbation as one of
the most common causes of a number of complaints all linked to the nose, of course.

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Indeed, the way Webster terms it, Fliess stepped into a self-created labyrinth of medical
error and misdiagnosis.
It is interesting to note that Freud later broke off relations with Fliess, as he did with
many others, including Breuer. The many letters he sent to Fliess, however, have been
preserved, but no thanks to Freud. For Freud was anxious to have the letters destroyed.
Why? Webster speculates that the most plausible reason is that, though Freud liked to
portray himself as the rugged and lonely explorer, an omnipotent father-figure who
commanded respect by his own intellectual self-reliance, his letters to Fliess tell a quite
different story. They show a man who, rather than inspiring awe in others, appears both
fallible and credulous. For Freud frequently adopts towards Fliess an attitude of
reverence and submission, and looks to his younger colleague at almost every stage for
guidance, advice and scientific enlightenment (220).
Another idea adopted by Freud was Ernst Haeckels biogenetic law, which
provides the biological basis for Freuds theory of infantile sexuality. Haeckel, who saw
himself as the founder of a new scientific religion and whose most significant
intellectual disciple was Adolf Hitler, wanted to make this theory into a universal
scientific law. In his view, while the body recapitulated the history of evolution in the
womb, developing from a unicellular organism to a fully-formed human, the soul only
partly evolved. The young childs mental life would then recapitulate the same stages of
evolutionary development. Thus, Haeckel saw his theory as an all-encompassing law of
human development in which, according to a genetically predetermined sequence, the
child would gradually progress from having the sexual consciousness of a simple
animal to having that of a human. As Frank Sulloway, who has written a seminal work on
Freud, has pointed out, the eventual sequence of oral, anal and genital stages of
sexuality which Freud postulated in the mature version of his sexual theory corresponded
precisely to the conventional evolutionary account of the development of sexual anatomy
in non-human animals (in Webster, 233).
These sexual stages should have been thrown into question, however, when
Haeckels biogenetic law was discredited and repudiated by professional biologists, but
many of Freuds followers merely skirted this intellectual impasse by rejecting or
ignoring the biological foundations of the theory while retaining the psychological
structure which used them as a basis. Moreover, Freud, by systematically suppressing the
biological origins of his theories, was able to claim to have rooted out these theories
independently via the painstaking methods of psychoanalysis. So effective was he at
burying these origins and at generally transforming the history of psychoanalysis into a
mythology, that many noted theorists of psychoanalysis remained largely ignorant of the
historical development of some of its most pivotal doctrines until quite recently.
Amazingly enough, no less a figure than Harvard professor, Erik Erikson, suggested in
his well-known book, Childhood and Society, that, in order to understand the theory of
infantile sexuality, we use an analogy. Which concept did he use to draw his analogy?
The very one upon which Freud had based his theory. Writes Erikson: I think that the
Freudian laws of psychosexual development can best be understood through an analogy
with physiological development in utero (Erikson 259). As Webster notes, We are here
confronted with a remarkable instance of a distinguished psychoanalytic theorist
accidentally reconstructing one of the intellectual origins of psychoanalysis under the
impression that he is offering merely an illuminating analogy (238). By way of

Szu-Yi Lin/ Cultivators Forum: English Language and Literature 2 (2013) 1-14

commentary, I offer an analogy of my own: Eriksons analogy is like you saying to your
next-door neighbor, That boy playing in your yard looks just like your son, to which
your indignant neighbor replies: Of course he looks like my son, you idiot. He is my
son!
Unfortunately, this refashioning of history did not stop with Freud. As Sulloway
contends:
The expedient denial and refashioning of history has been an indispensable
part of the psychoanalytic revolution. Perhaps more remarkable still is the
degree to which the whole process of historical censorship, distortion,
embellishment, and propaganda has been effected with the co-operation of
psychoanalysts who would instantly proclaim such phenomena as neurotic
[sic] if they spotted them in anyone else. (in Webster, 238; see Sulloway 445446)
Eevn more outrageous, however, is the way Freud refashioned his case histories to
fit his legend or to suit his theories. In the first version of the founding case of
psychoanalysis, the famous case of Anna O., who was actually Breuers patient, it was
said that she was completely cured. Though Freud knew otherwise, he endorsed this
view, believing that, since Breuer had been successful in curing some of Anna O.s
symptoms, it would not be too much to support the idea, in order to further the good
cause of psychoanalysis, that he had cured all her symptoms. There was one problem
with leaving the supposed outcome of this legendary case intact, however: Freud would
not look like so original a thinker. Consequently, he later reported to Jung and Ernest
Jones, that the cure Breuer reported never took place, implying that only a therapist with
his own unique insight could have brought the case to a successful conclusion. Thus, we
see the self-serving Freud at first disingenuously supporting a falsehood to build up his
brain-child, only to reveal the real facts later when he can give them his own biased slant.
As Webster notes in summing up Freuds need to enhance his own image as a scientist
and creative thinker.
In almost all the cases which he reported in Studies in Hysteria [co-authored
with Breuer] he claimed at least some degree of therapeutic credit even though
there was no evidence that he had effected any cure. In the case of Anna O. he
encouraged Breuer to make such a claim while knowing full well that no such
cure had taken place. In the case of Fleischl-Marxow he engaged in an
astonishing rush to publication in order to claim a cure [via cocaine] which he
anticipated but which he was never in fact to achieve. (205)
Webster then goes on to describe how Freud again does the same thing to support his
seduction theory. So as to counter objections to this theory, in a paper he read in April
1896 to the Vienna Neurological Society, The Aetiology of Hysteria, he claimed that in
eighteen cases of hysteria he had been able to discover the connection between every
single symptom of hysteria and his patients sexual life, and where the circumstances
allowed, to confirm it by therapeutic success (see Webster, pp. 205ff.). His
correspondence with Fliess, however, reveals something different. In a series of letters
written from May 1896 to March of the following year, he constantly laments to Fliess
his inability to finish off a single case of hysteria (Ibid.; see also Esterson 14-15). In other
words, Freud, again anticipating therapeutic success, publicly announced it before it

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occurred or rather, failed to occur. In 1933, after he had abandoned this theory and
replaced it with his infantile-sexuality theory, he insisted that in that earlier period
almost all my women patients told me that they had been seduced by their father. I was
driven to recognize in the end that these reports were untrue and so came to understand
that hysterical symptoms are derived from fantasies and not from real occurrences (in
Webster, 211). But various scholars now think that these women told him no such thing.
Rather, to support his pet theory of the time Freud merely deduced these occurrences
from what his patients told them, even when what they said amounted to denials that they
had ever happened. Thus, Webster: The memories of scenes of childhood seduction
were not real memories at all. They were, as a matter of theoretical necessity,
constructed, suggested or forced on patients by Freud himself (210). In substantiation of
the claim of Webster and others is the fact that one of the essential features of Freuds
seduction theory is the idea that episodes of childhood seduction would have a
pathological effect only if the supposed victim had no conscious recollection of the
episode (Webster 202). Thus, presumably, if they had reported abuse, he would be
precluded from regarding them as cases of hysteria and be forced to see them as cases
manifesting symptoms of some other ailment.
In his own book on Freud, Allen Esterson agrees with Websters analysis, making
the well-taken point that after Freud abandoned this theory, very few patients were found
reporting sexual abuse in childhood: If he had indeed been the recipient of frequent
reports of paternal seductions, why should such cease as soon as he abandoned the
seduction theory? There would seem to be no plausible explanation of this anomaly, other
than that most of his seduction theory patients did not in fact disclose instances of
paternal abuse, as he later claimed (24; see also p. 29). Both authors also point out that
at the time Freud posited his seduction theory, he did not surmise that his patients had
been abused necessarily by their fathers but, rather, by any male adult, whether a stranger,
uncle or family friend. Later, however, as evidenced above, he conveniently read father
for male adult so his seduction theory, though now recognized as fallacious and
discarded, would appear more in line with his Oedipus theory, according to which sons
fantasize about sleeping with their mothers and girls with their fathers. That is, he would
appear as if he had been at least on the right track.
In any case, in accordance with his erstwhile seduction theory, Freuds idea that a
true victim of hysteria cannot consciously recall the episode of abuse illustrates a general
principle of his therapeutic practice: the analyst must always look for hidden motives and
discount what the patient says. As Webster says of the case of Elisabeth von R., here, as
previously, Freud chose his own speculations over her own account of what happened,
and even writes that he had revealed to her, as became his habit with his patients, what
happened before she did (see also Esterson 18). Having placed himself in the position of
the omniscient god who knows what happened in Elisabeth von R.s mind, he is even
able to argue with her when she denies it (167). And as Sandor Ferenczi, one of his
closest disciples, said of him: He looms like a god above his poor patient, who has been
degraded to the status of a child (in Webster, 354). Paradoxically, at the same time Freud
would explain any failure to achieve a cure as due to a lack of sufficient and sufficiently
honest testimony from his patients. In other words, he would blame his patients for
failing to be cured: I accustomed myself to regarding as incomplete any story that
brought about no therapeutic improvement, he says (in Webster, 147). This, of course,

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makes his theories irrefutable, for suddenly there is no way to disprove them. If he felt
the patient was holding back or refused to confess to something, however, he wouldnt
just stop there. Indeed, he held it as a general principle that the analyst, despite the
patients protests and assurances that they had bared all, must not believe them, but
assume that there was more they should say. Sounding more like an inquisitor than a
father confessor, he himself once candidly admitted that he would often direct his
patients attention to repressed sexual ideas in spite of all their protestations (Webster
197).
Even more egregious, in contradiction to his own (as-yet-uninvented) theory of
repression, he once accused Dora, one of his more famous cases, thus: Aha! I know
about you. I know your dirty little secrets. Admit that you were secretly attracted to Herr
K. Admit that you masturbated when you were five. Look at what youre doing now as
you lie there playing with your reticule [handbag]opening it, putting a finger into it,
shutting it again! (in Webster, 199). What makes Freud appear in such a bad light in this
case is that Doras father had asked Freud to see her after she became distressed over a
family friend, Herr K.s, unwanted sexual advances, beginning when she was fourteen.
When she told him of this, however, her father took Herr K.s side, because, Dora
believes, he is having an affair with Frau K., Herr K.s wife, and wanted to continue
seeing her. Dora even suspects that her father has tacitly encouraged Herr K. to show her
this unwelcome attention, as if her father were compensating him for being allowed to
attend to his wife. Naturally, Dora resents this. Instead of taking her account at its face
value, however, Freud tries to convince her that she is secretly in love with Herr K.,
throughout the treatment bombard[ing] Dora with a stream of interpretations aimed at
inducing her to doubt the integrity of her own feelings in regard to a man who had shown
himself to be duplicitous and unworthy (Esterson 51). Remarkably, he even implies that
if after a slap in the face Herr K. had persisted and been able to convince her of the
genuineness of his passion, he might have gotten everything he wanted. Astoundingly, he
also claims that not only is she secretly in love with Herr K., but with her father and Frau
K. as well (her mother is excluded as a love object perhaps only because she plays such a
peripheral role). Freud, however, probably succeeded only in confirming a suspicion she
must have had from the beginning of treatment: that Freud was only a tool of her father.
No wonder that Dora broke off treatment not long after.
Unfortunately, hers was not the only case in which he bullied his patient. To cite
Webster: Not only does he frequently treat his patients as though they are deliberately
and maliciously attempting to conceal the true facts from him, but on a significant
number of occasions he appears to decide in advance that his patient is guilty of a
particular action, thought or desire, and then to interpret replies to his intensive
questioning in such a way that his suspicion is substantiated (199). In apparently
numerous cases, in fact, Freud went so far as to infer so much that the patient must have
felt helpless, almost as if she were in the hands of fate itself. To quote Esterson: His
knowledge of the infantile sexual activity does not come directly from the patient; it is
again an inference. By a remarkable tour de force, he manages to obsure the fact that the
only secure datum he has is the original symptom itselfthe rest is conjecture, based on
preconceived theoretical notions (34).
Like Webster, Esterson recognizes that one of Freuds biggest problems was that
often what began as conscious speculations soon became in his eyes the real thing. After

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examining Freuds case of The Wolf Man and contrasting Freuds claim of a cure with the
patients later denial that a cure ever took place, as well as his declaration that he did not
believe in psychoanalysis, he notes Freuds tendency to reach a state of total conviction
about his own ideas even when they are based on the flimsiest of foundations, and to be
so transported by the intellectual excitement of working out his analyses that he
sometimes loses all contact with reality (92). Here Webster (150) provides a telling
image by imagining Freuds perspective as the result of looking through a telescope:
when he found any small sign which supported his theories, he would view it magnified
through the small end; when he faced any objection to them, he would invert the
telescope and regard it diminished through the large end.
So important did these theories become to him, in fact, that he championed them as
universal keys opening up the locks behind which lay the secrets of all human behavior,
causing Breuer to lament his tendency to overgeneralize and reduce everyone to one mold
(Webster 179, 196). Thus, it should be no surprise that, for Freud and generations of
analysts after him, womens hats came to be interpreted as a genital organ in disguise, as
were overcoats, ties, tools, weapons, luggage, eyes, noses, ears, mouths and even certain
kinds of relatives, especially sons, daughters and sisters!
We have already described one way in which Freud made his theories irrefutable,
but he had others as well. Another such was his argument that, though it is generally true
that dreams are wish fulfillments, there is also a phenomenon he termed the counterwish dream. These are dreamed by a group of people who can be described as mental
masochists and who have unpleasant dreams precisely because these satisfy their wish to
suffer (Webster 266). Another favorite counter-criticism liable to be resorted to whenever
psychoanalysis was attacked was the charge that those who refused to believe in it were
simply displaying a phenomenon Freud claimed to see so often in his patients
resistance. Thus, his critics were outwardly so disturbed by his theories because they
resisted facing the truth inherent within these theories. Further, he argued that, since the
unconscious was so unyielding to observation and analysis, only psychoanalysis and
those trained in it could hope to gain access to it (see Esterson 28, Webster 249). Yet,
Wittgenstein observed that Freud very commonly gives what we might call a sexual
interpretation. But it is interesting that among all the reports of dreams that he gives,
there is not a single example of a straightforward sexual dream. Yet these are as common
as rain (in Webster, 270). But the reason for this should be obvious: such dreams would
leave no work for the therapist and then what would become of psychoanalysis? Finally,
because of the very nature of Freuds theories themselves, refutation was impossible, for,
like the central tenets of most religions, they can be neither proven nor disproven. Freuds
theories, in fact, defy confirmation by scientific proof and are ultimately untenable, while
his therapeutic method has provided only very limited clinical validation.
Consequently, Freud was often able, quite ingeniously, to turn on its head testimony
which contradicted his theories, as in the case of the woman who hated the thought of
spending summer holidays with her mother-in-law and who had recently made
arrangements to avoid this possibility. Soon after Freud explained to her that dreams were
wish fulfillments, she described a dream in which she found herself travelling with her
mother-in-law. In his written account of the case Freud then asks whether this does not
contradict his theory that in dreams wishes are fulfilled. Yes, he remarks, which only
serves to prove his thesis. That is, the dream showed that I was wrong. Thus it was her

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wish that I might be wrong, and her dream showed that wish fulfilled (Freuds italics)
(in Webster, 265).
But, as Webster (256) remarks in his ongoing analysis of Freuds theories, there is
no evidence that a boys feelings toward his mother are strongest between the ages of
three and five. Nor is there any evidence that sexual feelings in children of these ages
wish to be satisfied by coitus. Moreover, the incest-taboo is so powerful in every culture
that it affects all child-rearing behavior, including how parents show love to their
children, thus making it extremely difficult to determine what kind of child behavior
should be deemed non-sexual. As Webster comments: Any empirically based
psychological theory would, of necessity, depend on close observation and analysis of the
immensely complex pattern of child-rearing behavior which results (257).
Unfortunately, Freuds theories are not empirically-based. On the contrary, empirical
factors are almost completely disregarded.
For his part, Webster sees Freuds method as defeating its purported purpose: to help
the patient free himself (herself) of compulsive tendencies and their deleterious
consequences through symptom formation by making him conscious of the causes of his
neurosis. Ideally, he would then transcend the destructive urgency of his impulses by
sublimating them, i.e., expressing them in a morally and socially more acceptable form.
Says Freud: Repression is replaced by a condemning judgement carried out along the
best lines (in Webster, 351). Perhaps this condemning judgement can be thought of as
a kind of censor, the Freudian superego, warning the individual not to get caught up in his
fixations. Websters criticism stems from his perception that, instead of dissolving
feelings of guilt, analytic therapy, like the Catholic ritual of confession upon which it is
based, tends to vitalize them, thereby locking the patient into an endless pattern: Just as
the ideal of Christianity is one of interminable confession, so the ideal of psychoanalysis is,
to use Freuds own words, one of interminable analysis (352). In fact, one explanation of
the ability of psychoanalysis to survive as a theoretical and therapeutic system, despite the
now overwhelming evidence against it, is that it gives secularized, modern man a forum in
which to confess. And to see how overwhelming the need to confess can become, one need
only study, in Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter, the fatal consequences of Dimmesdales
inability to confess his sin until it is too late.
A further problem with psychoanalysis is that the patients natural desire for
psychological intimacy with someone to whom he has confidentially revealed his most
secret thoughts is frustrated by the therapist who follows Freuds recommended method
of keeping silent and aloof when the patient is most in need of parental-like reassurance.
Ferenczi saw this kind of transference as being, ironically, artificially provoked due to
this very attitude of the therapist (Webster 354).
Websters linking of psychoanalysis with Christianity is not made unadvisedly, for
he sees it not only as a pseudo-science, but as a religion modeled on Judao-Christian
doctrine with the infantile-sexuality theory as the central creed of Freuds Church. For
although, ironically, Freud was a professed atheist, like a messianic prophet he permitted
no deviation from his orthodox teachings (306). Nor would he allow anyone to question
his authority for fear of losing it. In his own account of what partly led to their rupture, in
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (pp. 181ff.) Carl Jung writes that when they were staying
together in America and analyzing each others dreams, his hopes that Freud would
reveal more of his personal life to him were dashed when, instead of pursuing

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psychological truth, Freud remarked: I could tell you more but I cannot risk my
authority. Says Jung, this proved to be a severe blow to the whole relationship in it
the end of our relationship was already foreshadowed (in Webster, 377-78).
Webster traces these tendencies of Freuds to make the psychoanalytic movement
into a Church with his all-encompassing theories as its chief dogma to his early
childhood, during which he was seen by his parents as the child in whom they placed
their highest aspirations. In other words, much was expected of him in that, as the eldest,
he became the center of family hopes. The disturbing factor in this seemingly anodyne
relationship is that such a child, sensing their love is conditioned on the premise that he
must make something special of himself, may feel unworthy of their love if he does not
fulfill those hopes. In compensation, he may seek acceptance outside the family circle
and, in an extreme case like Freuds, even universal approbation: At a certain tortured
extreme it would seem that it is just such a dream of exchanging intimate rejection for
universal acceptance which underlies messianic fantasies (39).
In line with this messianic purpose, Freud saw psychoanalysis as his universal
healing method and as, along with Darwins evolutionary ideas, a great blow inflicted on
the nave self love of man precisely because man within his unconscious contained
tendencies that were inescapably evil in their potential for harm (in Webster, 314). To
Webster this is merely the doctrine of Original Sin in modern clothing. And just as the
Gulliver of Swift saw man as belonging to the race of the beast-like Yahoos but as
containing a smattering of the divinely rational mind of the Houhynhnms, Freud viewed
human history as an upward striving from the realm of the flesh towards that of the spirit
with the smaller conscious playing the role of the moral self but the deep, underlying
unconscious that of the evil self (311). But for Webster the analogy with Swift does not
end there:
By portraying the unconscious or the id as a seething mass of unclean
impulses, and seeing men and women as driven by dark sexual and sadistic
impulses and a secret love of excrement which was associated with a
compulsion to hoard money, Freud in effect recreated Swifts Christian vision
of unregenerate man as a Yahoo. By casting his intense moral vision in an
ostensibly technical form he effectively reinvented, for a modern scientific
age, the traditional Christian doctrine of Original Sin. (319)
Thus, for Freud the unconscious, the seat of infantile impulses, was evil by nature.
No wonder he saw children as being unwitting agents of an evil that was natural to them:
This frightful evil is simply the initial, primitive, infantile part of mental life, which we
can find in actual operation in children (in Webster, 327). Webster, however, sees this
as simply one part of the displacement of male feelings onto children and other creatures
of lesser social status: Psychoanalysis does not only project mens feelings of
inadequacy onto women, and the anxieties and obscene impulses of the normal
personality onto neurotics, it also, perhaps most significantly of all, projects adult
impulses and desires onto children (327). Given such a cynical view of man, we cannot
be too surprised by Ferenczis assertions about Freud: He said that patients are only
riffraff. The only thing patients were good for is to help the analyst make a living and to
provide material for theory. It is clear we cannot help them. Nevertheless we entice
patients by concealing these doubts and by arousing their hopes of being cured (in
Webster, 354). Ferenczis conclusion: This is therapeutic nihilism.

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For Webster, all this goes to explain why Freud, ceaselessly driven by messianic
ambitions, would fall blindly in love with any doctrine that seemed to promise a way of
realizing those ambitions. It also explains why he saw neurasthenia as the consequence of
an abnormal sexual life, chiefly masturbation. For the opinion that masturbation, and all
other forms of non-procreative sexual activity, were harmful and wrong clearly has its
origins not in nineteenth-century medicine at all but in Christian theology (189). Finally,
it explains why, by the force of his crazed personality, Freud was able to foster a cult,
with himself as cult-idol, among a small group of early disciples who, in the words of one
sociologist, were remarkable for their elitism and sense of exclusiveness, combined with
an extreme mistrust of and hostility toward the outside world; an eschatological vision of
reality which made adherence to the group an experience approaching religious
conversion; and, more important, an exaggerated reverence for the founder which
transcended the normal bounds of scientific authoritarianism (cited in Webster, 308).
No wonder that Freud spoke of Adler and Jung as the two heretics who wanted to be
Popes (see Webster 362), and that his ultimate weapon against further heresy was
excommunication: The messianic personality thus tends to use the tactic of
excommunication in very much the same way as the tyrant uses execution. By making an
example of any outright dissident, he effectively creates an atmosphere of emotional
terror which will serve to intimidate his other followers (365; see also 366). Thus, one
observer, Max Graf, saw Adlers expulsion as the consequence of his refusal to accept the
libido theory, for which heresy he was punished by excommunication (310).
Clearly, Freud is a classic example of a researcher who, instead of changing his
theories to fit the evidence, shaped the evidence to fit his theories. By way of summing
up, let me add that Malcolm Macmillan, after spending twelve years of intensive labor
studying Freud and writing a solidly-argued, comprehensive tome to prove it, concludes
that 1) as a theory of personality, psychoanalysis has litter to recommend it; 2) as a
method, it, like other psychotherapies, creates its own data ( i.e., is unverifiable); and 3)
as a science: My evaluation shows that at none of the different stages through which it
evolved could Freuds theory generate adequate explanations (625). Apropos, when The
Interpretation of Dreams (1899) first appeared, the Viennese philosopher Heinrich
Gomperz offered himself up to Freud as a guinea pig on whom he might test his dream
theories. After several months the experiment was abandoned, having proved a complete
failure. All the dreadful things which he suggested I might have concealed from myself
and suppressed I could honestly assure him had always been clearly and consciously
present in my mind (in Webster, 271). Indeed, what Freud had failed to recognize is that
many examples of reticence he encountered did not necessarily signify repression but
simple modesty, the natural reluctance to express ones most intimate, consciously sexual
fantasies in public.
Thus, just as Marxs theories have recently fallen into disrepute, so must FreudsI
feel quite certain of this, though it will take some timeand the sooner the better, since
they have already done much harm. One horrendous example is the recovered-memory
movement, in which women, with the help and, at times, the now-more-subtle bullying of
their therapists, are supposedly regaining childhood memories of sexual abuse which, due
to the trauma, has been buried in their unconscious. With their therapists support, they
have found the courage to release their pent-up anger and fear and accuse what, in
Freudian analysis, is the biggest targettheir fathers. While some of these memories may

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be genuine, the many retractions seem to indicate that most are not. Thus, lives have been
ruined and families destroyed partly because we are still in thrall to Freudian thinking.
But, as should be clear by now, the bitter fact is that the misguided role played by the
therapist is just a continuation of a trend started fact is that the misguided role played by
the therapist is just a continuation of a trend started by the master, whether it was the
Freud of the seduction theory or the Freud of the infantile-sexuality theory. To cite
Webster:
Freuds manner of treating his early women patients was not essentially
different from the manner he treated his later ones. For in both cases his
theories denied women autonomy and declined to validate their own
experiences and their own memories. Whereas his later theories led countless
psychoanalysts to persuade women who had been abused to believe they had
not, Freud himself had, under the influence of his early theories, frequently
tried to persuade women who had not been abused to believe that they had.
(517)
In fact, I think its time, after decades of deception, that Humpty Dumpty had a great
fall and the psychoanalytical superstructure came tumbling down. To paraphrase
Nietzsche, whatever is in danger of falling deserves to be pushed.
As for the teaching of literary criticism, if this view of Freud is correct, the great
task ahead should be obvious: everything that Freud has said about the artist and
literature must be re-examined. At the least, psychoanalysis must cease to be considered
one of the cornerstones of literary criticism. And I should hope that graduate students will
no longer be encouraged to write theses, whose main focus is propped up by Freuds
theories and those of his disciples, whether Jones, Erikson, Lacan, or others of their ilk.

References
Adams, Hazard. Critical Theory Since Plato. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Inc., 1971; revised edition, 1992.
Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society, Penguin, 1967.
Esterson, Allen. Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud.
Chicago: Open Court, 1993.
Guerin, Labor, Morgan, Reesman & Willingham. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to
Literature, Third Edition. Oxford Univ. Press, 1992.
Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.
Macmillan, Malcolm. Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT
Press, 1997.

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Szu-Yi Lin/ Cultivators Forum: English Language and Literature 2 (2013) 1-14

Pendergrast, Mark. Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives, 2nd
ed. Upper Access, Inc., 1996.
Sulloway, Frank J. Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend.
Burnett Books/Andr Deutsch, 1979.
Webster, Richard. Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis. New York:
Basic Books (Harper Collins), 1995.