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Why Freud Was Wrong
''Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis'' (1995; second edition 1996; third edition 2005) is a book by Richard Webster, in which the author provides a critique of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, and attempts to develop his own theory of human nature. Webster argues that Freud became a kind of Messiah and that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience and a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Webster endorses Gilbert Ryle's arguments against mentalist philosophies in ''The Concept of Mind'' (1949), and criticizes many other authors for their treatment of Freud and psychoanalysis. The book for which Webster may be best remembered, it has been called "brilliant" and "definitive", but has also been criticized for shortcomings of scholarship and argument. It formed part of the "Freud wars", an ongoing controversy around psychoanalysis. Summary Webster argues that Freud became a kind of Messiah and that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience and a disguised c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Webster (British Author)
Richard Webster (17 December 1950 – 24 June 2011) was a British author. His five published books deal with subjects such as the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel ''The Satanic Verses'' (1988), Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, and the investigation of sexual abuse in Britain. Born in Newington, Kent, Webster studied English literature at the University of East Anglia and lived in Oxford, England. He became interested in the problem of false allegations partly due to reading the work of historian Norman Cohn. In ''A Brief History of Blasphemy'' (1990), Webster discussed the Muslim response to ''The Satanic Verses'' and argues against unrestricted freedom of speech. The book was praised by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In Webster's subsequent book ''Why Freud Was Wrong'' (1995), he argued that Freud became a Messiah figure and that psychoanalysis is a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The book was praised by several commentators. In ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nature (journal)
''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. ''Nature'' was one of the world's most cited scientific journals by the Science Edition of the 2019 ''Journal Citation Reports'' (with an ascribed impact factor of 42.778), making it one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals. , it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month. Founded in autumn 1869, ''Nature'' was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander Macmillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the journal; ''Nature'' redoubled its efforts in exp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Szasz
Thomas Stephen Szasz ( ; hu, Szász Tamás István ; 15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism. His books ''The Myth of Mental Illness'' (1961) and ''The Manufacture of Madness'' (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him. Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not "illnesses" in the sense that physical illnesses are, and that except for a few identifiable brain diseases ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Breuer
Joseph Breuer, also known as Yosef Breuer (March 20, 1882 – April 19, 1980) was a rabbi and community leader in Germany and the United States. He was rabbi of one of the large Jewish synagogues founded by German-Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi oppression that had settled in Washington Heights, New York. Life and career Joseph Breuer was born in 1882 in Pápa, Hungary, to the local rabbi Solomon Breuer and Sophie Breuer ''née'' Hirsch, who was the youngest daughter of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. After the passing of Hirsch in 1888, Solomon Breuer was elected his successor as rabbi of the ''Austrittsgemeinde'' (seceded community) of Orthodox Jews known as Khal Adath Jeshurun. Here, Breuer Sr. founded a yeshiva called the Torah Lehranstalt and became its first Rosh Yeshiva. Joseph studied at the Torah Lehranstalt until 1903, when he was awarded semicha, and in 1905 he completed university studies at the University of Strasbourg with a PhD on the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decline And Fall Of The Freudian Empire
''Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire'' (1985; second edition 2004) is a book by the psychologist Hans Eysenck, in which the author criticizes Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Eysenck argues that psychoanalysis is unscientific. The book received both positive and negative reviews. Eysenck has been criticized for his discussion of the physician Josef Breuer's treatment of his patient Anna O., whom Eysenck argues suffered from tuberculous meningitis. Summary Eysenck argues that psychoanalysis is unscientific and that its theories are based on no legitimate base of observation or experiment and have the status only of speculation. Eysenck argues that the veracity of psychoanalysis is testable through traditional empirical means, and that in all areas where such tests have been carried out it has failed. Eysenck calls Freud, "a genius, not of science, but of propaganda, not of rigorous proof, but of persuasion, not of the design of experiments, but of literary art." A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Eysenck
Hans Jürgen Eysenck (; 4 March 1916 – 4 September 1997) was a German-born British psychologist who spent his professional career in Great Britain. He is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, although he worked on other issues in psychology. At the time of his death, Eysenck was the most frequently cited living psychologist in the peer-reviewed scientific journal literature. Eysenck's research purported to show that certain personality types had an elevated risk of cancer and heart disease. Scholars have identified errors and suspected data manipulation in Eysenck's work, and large replications have failed to confirm the relationships that he purported to find. An enquiry on behalf of King's College London found the papers by Eysenck to be "incompatible with modern clinical science". In 2019, 26 of his papers (all coauthored with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek) were considered "unsafe" by an enquiry on behalf of King's College London. Fourteen of his papers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Memory Wars
''The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute'' is a 1995 book that reprints articles by the critic Frederick Crews critical of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and recovered-memory therapy. It also reprints letters from Harold P. Blum, Marcia Cavell, Morris Eagle, Matthew Erdelyi, Allen Esterson, Robert R. Holt, James Hopkins, Lester Luborsky, David D. Olds, Mortimer Ostow, Bernard L. Pacella, Herbert S. Peyser, Charlotte Krause Prozan, Theresa Reid, James L. Rice, Jean Schimek, and Marian Tolpin. The book had a mixed reception. The articles by Crews it reprinted, including "The Unknown Freud", have been seen as turning points in the popular reception of Freud and psychoanalysis, and some commentators credited Crews with discrediting Freud's theories and convincingly criticizing recovered-memory therapy. However, others criticized him for failing to resolve the issues he explored and questioned his understanding of repression. He has been seen as presenting some of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Crews
Frederick Campbell Crews (born 20 February 1933) is an American essayist and literary critic. Professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, Crews is the author of numerous books, including ''The Tragedy of Manners: Moral Drama in the Later Novels of Henry James'' (1957), ''E. M. Forster: The Perils of Humanism'' (1962), and ''The Sins of the Fathers'' (1966), a discussion of the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He received popular attention for ''The Pooh Perplex'' (1963), a book of satirical essays parodying contemporary casebooks. Initially a proponent of psychoanalytic literary criticism, Crews later rejected psychoanalysis, becoming a critic of Sigmund Freud and his scientific and ethical standards. Crews was a prominent participant in the "Freud wars" of the 1980s and 1990s, a debate over the reputation, scholarship, and impact on the 20th century of Freud, who founded psychoanalysis. Crews has published a variety of skeptical and rationalist ess ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incest
Incest ( ) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adoption, or lineage. It is strictly forbidden and considered immoral in most societies, and can lead to an increased risk of genetic disorders in children. The incest taboo is one of the most widespread of all cultural taboos, both in present and in past societies. Most modern societies have laws regarding incest or social restrictions on closely consanguineous marriages. In societies where it is illegal, consensual adult incest is seen by some as a victimless crime. Some cultures extend the incest taboo to relatives with no consanguinity such as milk-siblings, step-siblings, and adoptive siblings, albeit sometimes with less intensity. Third-degree relatives (such as half-aunt, half-nephew, first cousin) on average have 12.5% common genetic heri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Freudian Fallacy
''The Freudian Fallacy'', first published in the United Kingdom as ''Freud and Cocaine'', is a 1983 book about Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, by the medical historian Elizabeth M. Thornton, in which the author argues that Freud became a cocaine addict and that his theories resulted from his use of cocaine. The book received several negative reviews, and some criticism from historians, but has been praised by authors critical of Freud and psychoanalysis. The work has been compared to Jeffrey Masson's ''The Assault on Truth'' (1984). Reception ''The Freudian Fallacy'' received a mixed review from Wray Herbert in ''Psychology Today'' and a negative review from the psychoanalyst Jeffrey Satinover in ''Library Journal''. The book was also reviewed by Michael Neve in the ''London Review of Books'', the psychoanalyst Anthony Storr in ''The Times Literary Supplement'', and the historian Paul Roazen in the ''American Journal of Psychiatry'', A. J. Fogarty in the ''British Med ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Assault On Truth
''The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory'' is a book by the former psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, in which the author argues that Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, deliberately suppressed his early hypothesis, known as the seduction theory, that hysteria is caused by sexual abuse during infancy, because he refused to believe that children are the victims of sexual violence and abuse within their own families. Masson reached this conclusion while he had access to several of Freud's unpublished letters as projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archives. ''The Assault on Truth'' was first published in 1984 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux; several revised editions have since been published. The book aroused massive publicity and controversy. It received many negative reviews, several of which rejected Masson's reading of psychoanalytic history. It was condemned by reviewers within the psychoanalytic profession, and came to be seen as the la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born March 28, 1941 as Jeffrey Lloyd Masson) is an American author. Masson is best known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his ''The Assault on Truth'' (1984), Masson argues that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because he feared that granting the truth of his female patients' claims (that they had been sexually abused) would hinder the acceptance of his psychoanalytic methods. Masson is a veganism advocate and has written about animal rights. Early life Jeffrey Masson is the son of Jacques Masson, a Frenchman of Bukharian Jewish ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger from an Ashkenazi strict Orthodox Jewish family. Both of his parents were followers of the guru Paul Brunton. Masson's mother later became a follower of mystic and philosopher John Levy. During the 1940s and 1950s, Brunton often lived with them, eventually designating Masson as his heir apparent. In 1956, Diana and Jacques Masson moved to Uruguay becau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
