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Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays

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According to its opening words, "not everyone will like this book", and probably that is true. In particular, people who still believe in psychoanalysis, or just that Sigmund Freud was a great thinker who advanced our understanding of human psychology, will hate this book. Others who have espoused more recent sets of irrational beliefs, such as "intelligent design", will find much to dislike. All of these may well constitute a majority of the reading public, but they should still leave a substantial minority who will appreciate Frederick Crews's surgical skill in dissecting much of the nonsense that passes for science.

Much of the early part of the book is devoted to Freud, not only to his ideas, but also to his character as a person and his lack of concern for the well-being of his patients. As a former believer in Freudian analysis, Crews uses his expert knowledge to demolish it thoroughly, noting Freud's inconsistencies, his failure to cure his patients, his lack of interest in subjecting his theories to tests and so on. Karl Popper long ago concluded that what distinguished psychoanalysis from real science was that real science is "falsifiable" -- it is subject to tests that are potentially devastating -- whereas pseudoscientific theories can accommodate absolutely any observation. Rather surprisingly, Popper is not mentioned in the book, though lesser philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend do make brief appearances. Nonetheless, it is clear that Crews has absorbed the essential idea of falsifiability.

A more recent abuse of science is to be found in claims that repressed memories of childhood abuse can be "recovered" by appropriate therapy, and even that the supposed abusers themselves can be induced to "remember" their past crimes. All of this provides an eerie reminder of 17th century witch-hunting, but Crews shows that its theoretical basis can be found in Freud's early writing, when he thought that the mental problems of his patients were due to repressed memories of traumatic childhood events.

A particularly impressive part of the book comes when Crews discusses "intelligent design" as a supposed competitor to natural selection for explaining why the biological world is the way it is -- impressive because it is rare to find a professor of English literature with as complete a command of the essential ideas of modern Darwinism as Crews displays. So far as compromises with religion go, he shows a surer grasp of the issues than some who should know better.

In summary, therefore, although it is true that not everyone will like this book, there should be many who will like it very much.

Nobody, it seems, can argue more vigorously than a convert. Even, as in this case, a convert away from a belief. In this collection of delicious critiques, Crews opens with an assault on a belief he once held - the value of psychoanalysis. Crews had been enamoured of Freud's explanations of the mind until he looked more closely at the evidence. "Looking more closely at the evidence" forms the theme of this collection. The "wise" here, are those who have promoted several academically-based causes without considering the evidence underlying them.

The "evidence" in the Freud segment of the book comes in the form of the Viennese doctor's own statements, in letter or book form. Crews discovered Freud to be more concerned with his own grandeur than in the well-being of his "patients". Even during "therapeutic" sessions, Freud paid little or no attention to his patients - a fundamental in the "free association" process. As the doctor developed his notions of the ego, superego and id, he began manoeuvring his patients into fitting his notions. This pernicious tactic was furthered by Freud's followers, particularly in the United States. "Therapists" became adept at formulating scenarios and badgering their subjects until those unfortunates accepted roles they'd never experienced. This practice became prevalent in the "repressed memory" movement that saw families destroyed and innocents jailed for acts never committed.

The essayist's most expressive prose takes full flight in the chapters on the US phenomenon of "creationism". For this topic, Crews leaves few writers unscarred. It's easy, of course, to unravel the inconsistencies and convoluted propositions of the current wave of creationist writers. There are no scholars among them - at least none researching the topic, a point Crews makes clear as he easily dismisses them. The real problem is in coping with such professionals as the late Stephen J. Gould, Kenneth Miller and Michael Ruse. Gould's attempt to provide safe, but separate, havens for religion and science was an utter flop. Michael Ruse, who tries to make peace with everybody, only stumbles and renders himself ineffectual according to Crews. Kenneth Miller on the other hand, produced a book that devastated the claims of "intelligent design" - which is neither - then nearly binned his success by trying to wrap the universe in a lightly woven supernatural cloak. Crews sees through the Emperor's garb to perceive what's really there.

The final segment of the book brings Crews full circle to his long career as a literary critic. The essay on Melville deserves the widest reading. If nothing else, it prepares the reader for his scathing attack on "post-structuralism". Aimed at readers who have been through the academic courses in the humanities over the last generation or two, the dissection of Lacan and Foucault ideas of what constitutes "truth" and how it is to be discerned would be gut-wrenching, were it not so hilarious. It's all very reminiscent of "Doctor Strangelove" where the decision to laugh or weep becomes increasingly difficult. Those who teach or have attended humanities courses in recent years will find Crews assessment jolting. Still, like any therapy that cures a serious illness, a period of pain is worth the cure. If the cure "takes", that is. The medicine may be difficult for some to swallow, but it's necessary to stem the current epidemic, which is less virulent, but remains a threat to thinking. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Let's be clear about this: "Follies of the Wise" is one sharp book. Comprised of essays written from 1993 and onwards, it includes `The Unknown Freud' and `The Revenge of the Repressed'. Even though Frederick Crews is widely regarded as the fiercest Freud-basher around, these essays by no means deal exclusively with his perception of psychoanalysis as being largely unscientific and the dangers of the recovered memory movement. Writing extensively on UFO's, theosophy and creationism as well as post-structuralism, he dissects anything unscientific, superstitious and snobbish. The last two essays beautifully conveys his love for Kafka and Melville. Furthermore there are two appendixes containing interviews with the author.
To be critical is sometimes equated with being offensive. Granted, his style can perhaps hardly be characterized as being mild-mannered, but there is nothing rancorous in it either. There is a difference between being acute and being acrimonious. To me, Frederick Crews is an intrepid advocate of critical thinking and he just happens to be a gifted writer as well.
Highly recommended.

Frederick Crews, a well-known American literary critic by trade, but also a popular writer on the 'culture wars' and on academia and academic practice, has collected a series of essays in "Follies of the Wise", most of them from the New York Review of Books.

The greater part of the collection is dedicated to refuting and eviscerating Freud and Freudianism, which is still unrelentingly influential both in the humanities and in pop psychology, if by no means in any scientific approach to psychological issues, where it has been discarded ages ago. Crews shows that Freud, rather than being a pioneer of science and an authoritative doctor surprised by the lurid confessions of his patients, in fact was a domineering and superstitious fraud, who badgered and pressured his patients into 'remembering' the most inane sexualized fantasies, until they either left his practice or gave in out of desperation. Freud and Freudianism have never cured a single person, and Freud himself in his 'secret' papers admits as much.

Moreover, Crews very effectively uses the critique of Freudianism to equally critique the highly damaging and unscientific theory of "repressed memories". Although a review of 60 years of experimental and clinical tests of this theory has revealed that there is not a single true case of "repressed memory", this theory has nonetheless been wedded in the United States to the Puritanism and sexual fright of that country, leading in the 1980s to a spate of "repressed memories" of the most absurd ritual Satanic sexual abuses and various other crimes. Most frighteningly, this was accepted without question by the courts and the general public (in the form of juries), who sentenced many people to long jail terms based on the fake evidence of this modern witch-hunt. Only recently has the damage from this theory fully come to light.

In the later part of the book, Crews takes aim on the one hand at the nonsensical evasions and pseudoscience of "intelligent design" as well as the platitudes and downplaying of scientific evidence by those, such as Ruse, who try to appease it. This topic has been done many times before by everyone from Weinberg to Dawkins to Lewontin, but Crews' essay is as good as any. What is more refreshing is that Crews also attacks the anti-scientific tendencies in the humanities, in particular literary science, that result from the wholesale adoption of the jargon and worldview of postmodernism and post-structuralism. While opposition to the scientific method and its results, not on a specific point but a priori, used to be the domain of precisely the reactionary religious groups in modern society, this has now more and more become the domain of disaffected pseudo- and former radicals. This tendency has proven highly damaging because it has given conservatives the opportunity to paint the entirety of academia and science as hopelessly ideological ivory tower idiots out of touch with normal people, which has greatly benefited their political position in times of contentious cultural shifts, such as in the United States. What is particularly remarkable is that unlike many other critics of this phenomenon, he does not see fit to dismiss or denigrate the entirety of the humanities or even just literature studies on the basis of this particular fad. Perhaps it helps here that Crews' on background is in this area, so that he can use a book on Melville to show that there are many other approaches also and that there is no reason to equate literary sciences with unreadable Lacanian jargon.

Crews does not, unfortunately, discuss the causes for the academic popularity of this ideology very extensively; but one suspects that for whatever reason (would-be) radical intellectuals have lost the prior faith of socialists in science and truth being on the side of the underdog in society. Instead, they now fear science and its results, afraid that it will reveal that leftism and its values was wrong all the time, so they adopt a rhetorical strategy of undermining the whole enterprise: sacrificing the Enlightenment to save the socialist project. If this theory (not one that Crews proposes) is true, it is all the more to be regretted that Crews counts Marxism in the same range as Freudianism and other made-up or unverifiable pseudo-theories. As reviewer Podmore already noted, Marxism is on the contrary an ally of science against all superstition and ideology, and what's more, Marxism also proves that science is on the side of the exploited and oppressed on its own terms, and that science does not need the dubious 'help' of all the revisionist fads from Black Athena to Lacan. It is sad that Crews does not recognize this.

Trenchant, devastating critiques of pseudoscience and hokum from "intelligent " design, to the psychoanalyst's couch, to the most hallowed halls of academe. Virtuoso displays of good scholarship, good logic, and good humor. A joy to read, and a brave challenge to the empire of superstition and nonsense.

Frederick Crews is a retired teacher from the University of California, Berkeley. In this brilliant collection of essays, he passes judgment on `Intelligent Design' creationism, UFO reports, satanic mind control, alien abductions, previous incarnations and telepathy. He demolishes the frauds Freud and Jung, and he exposes the cults of psychoanalysis, theosophy, Zen Buddhism, channelling, rebirthing and past life regression.

As he writes, science is "not a body of correct or incorrect ideas but a collective means of generating and testing hypotheses, and its trials eventually weed out error with unmatched success." He suggests, "If knowledge can be certified only by a social process of peer review, we ought to do what we can to foster communities of uncompromised experts. That means actively resisting guru-ism, intellectual cliquishness, guilt-assuaging double standards, and, needless, to say, disdain for the very concept of objectivity."

He observes, "trust in the supernatural does get shaken by the overall advance of science. This is an effect not of strict logic but of an irreversible shrinkage in mystery's terrain. Ever since Darwin forged an exit from the previously airtight argument from design, the accumulation of corroborated materialist explanations has left the theologian's `God of the gaps' with less and less to do. And an acquaintance with scientific laws and their uniform application is hardly compatible with faith-based tales about walking on water, a casting-out of devils, and resurrection of the dead."

He notes that certain features characterize religious fanaticism - "undue deference to authority, hostility towards dissenters, and, most basically, an assumption that intuitively held certitude is somehow more precious and profound than the hard-won gains of trial and error." He writes, "certain indicators of bad faith ... are unmistakable: persistence in claims that have already been exploded; reliance on ill-designed studies, idolized lawgivers, and self-serving anecdotes; evasion of objections and negative instances; indifference to rival theories and to the need for independent replication; and `movement' belligerence."

Unfortunately, he uses his justified attack on Freud to swipe at Marxism, as if exploitation and class conflict were as unreal as the Oedipus complex. Marxism is an ally of reason and common sense against wishful thinking and superstition. Nonetheless, Crews has produced a valuable book that examines and explodes many absurd claims and theories.

I bought this book because I liked the author's essays in The New York Review of Books. I admire his razor-sharp intelligence and his fearlessness in tackling "sacred cow" subjects. This collection doesn't disappoint in that respect. But it covers the same ground over and over again. The essays are grouped by theme, so if you read them in the order they are presented you start feeling that the author is beating a dead horse. I'd say only about half of the pieces in the book are worth reading; the rest need only a quick skim. But the ones worth reading are REALLY worth reading. Get the book from the library if you can. If not, I do recommend buying it, but with reservations.

The author Crews is a person who worked as an academic in the field of literature. Years ago he was a follower of the noted quack Freud. He later gained insight into the fact that Freud's work was that of a confidence trickster without the slightest merit and that it was part of branch of human reasoning described by Popper as essentialism. That is a set of ideas which were incapable of empirical testing or evaluation.

Fresh from this conversion Crews has thus devoted a good deal of the latter part of his life in revealing the error of Freud's system to the world. A number of the early essays in this book discuss Freud and aspects of his life and ideas. Crews seems just a little bitter about the issues and shows how Freud was more than a deluded fool. He shows that he never cured anyone and his work is simply a confidence trick.

In reality Freud has probably not been taken seriously as a thinker by anyone who has medical expertise for years. His main followers are people in some sections of academia where the work is to turn out turgid works talking about things already known but trying to put a bit of a spin on them so that one can get a thesis up or an articled published. To read again that his work is simply nonsense is not that interesting all though this book does reveal the fact that he was aware that he never actually cured anyone.

Crews however seemed to develop a passion for debunking stupid idea systems. He is clearly a highly intelligent and educated man and as such was called upon by the New York Review of books to write debunking essays on a number of things. He thus attacks the fashion for recovered memories, UFO abductions, intelligent design and Poststructuralism.

Although the essays on Freud are fighting a battle which has been won the other essays deal with issues that are still being fought out in the public arena and are an excellent starting point to gain knowledge of the issues. The only real criticism of the book was the that the essay on Poststructuralism was a little dull.

Crews does a first- rate demolition job on a number of Freudian theories. These speculative theories according to Crews have been subject to no true empirical test, and thus have no real weight of evidence beyond them. One would only have wished that Crews while debunking Freud nonetheless would have acknowledged him to be a true pioneer in the overall human effort to understand ourselves, primarily through his bringing to general consciousness the central importance of sexuality in our lives.
Crews also takes apart other irrationalities , repressed memory theory which he believes has been misused to bring unproveable false accusations , intelligent design ( which he argues presents a false alternative to Darwinian evolution)
Crews also argues for a complete split between Science and Religion and formulates the view that only the empirical methods of science have given us tested and reliable insight into Nature.
It is my feeling that it is not only possible but truly wise to share his positive valuation of scientific method and work, his contempt for many of the irrational absurdities which mankind has fallen, and will continue to fall for- without dismissing religious faith, and the hope given to much of mankind by belief in a personal God.

Crews' repentance for being lured into Freudian metaphysics of mind is welcome, but alas a bit late. How many students of literature have been contaminated by another ideology of English literary studies? And, Lacan, of the French post-modernist ilk still psycho-babbles, despite Foucault's indictments of the Cult of Therapy. Sociologist Philip Reiff (deceased) praised the Therapeutic Cult for its shift of focus, only to lament the death-works (Thanatos) of self-absorption posthumously. It's all lamentable, but Crews' late-date conversion and this deserved polemic is still unsatisfying.

For literary theorists who repudiate all this nonsense, I recommend Joseph Carroll's "Literary Darwinism" over Crews' alternative. While I have reservations about "fitting" literary theory into sociobiology's paradigm, Carroll's efforts are far more compelling and persuasive than Crews'. Yes, Darwinism is an empirical fact; so too are works of the creative imagination a fact -- just different types of fact. Trying to "fit" the creative imagination into a scientific paradigm is not without its own set of problems. But at least a theory about life itself, as E. O. Wilson's "Consilience" argues, should be a more viable template than the post-modernist fantasies espoused by Derrida, Lacan, Barthes, and the French pseudo-intellectual class.

As a Darwinian, I still have regard for the hermeneutics of Ricoeur, Gadamer, and Richards; the social constructionism of Searle; the philosophy of language of Austin and Wittgenstein; the criticism of Arnold, Frye, Auerbach, and Boothe; etc. While Darwinism informs us of how life evolved, it does not explain what we mean when we use words, how context changes meaning, how our imaginations concoct stories, narratives, or myths. Literary Darwinism surely surpasses most of the ideologies in today's English departments, but in philosophical parlance, it is necessary, but insufficient. At least, apostates are repenting, and that's a start.