The Memory Wars [Paperback]

Frederick Crews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1990

This volume contains two essays by Frederick Crews attacking Freudian psychoanalysis and its aftermath in the so-called "recovered memory" movement. The first essay reviews a growing body of evidence indicating that Freud doctored his data and manipulated his colleagues in an effort to consolidate a cult-life following that would neither defy nor upstage him. The second essay challenges the scientific and therapeutic claims of the rapidly growing recovered-memory movement, maintaining that its social effects have been devestating. Crews traces that movement to a Freudian precedent - not just to Freud's abandoned "seduction theory", but also to the most essential assumptions of psychoanalysis itself. When the essays were first published in the "New York Review of Books", therapists, patients, scholars and philosophers responded with numerous letters. Twenty-five of these were published, with Crews's replies. Most are gathered in the book, together with a new introduction describing the genesis of his pieces, and an epilogue considers the debate and its reverberations. Frederick Crews is the author of "Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Critical Method", "Skeptical Engagements" and "The Critics Beat It Away: American Fiction and the Academy", which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This volume collects Frederick Crews's two controversial essays on Freud from the New York Review of Books, "The Unknown Freud" and "The Revenge of the Repressed," as well as some of the critical letters provoked by their original publication in 1993 and 1994. In these essays, Crews elaborates upon his belief that "the relatively patent and vulgar pseudoscience of recovered memory rests in appreciable measure on the respectable and entrenched pseudoscience of psychoanalysis." Recovered memory therapy, according to his thesis, is a grossly negative practice that, in turn, has its origins in Freudian assumptions about psychoanalysis--assumptions that Crews charges were based on fraudulent data and intellectual bullying. As the reader responses indicate, these ideas were like a grenade tossed into the center of psychoanalytic culture, made all the more powerful by Crews's lively prose.

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: New York Review Books (January 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940322072
• ISBN-13: 978-0940322073
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #772,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent first stop for the novice Freud reader, April 1, 2000

By 

Snipe (Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Memory Wars (Paperback)

For those of you who have swallowed the Freud legend hook, line, and sinker, this book may help get you off the hook.

Seriously, though, this book is not one to miss, regardless of your theoretical beliefs.

For you Freudians, it dispuptes the naive hagiographies of Peter Gay and Jones, and prepares you to engage in the current battles that rage about Freud and his ideas. You might not like what it says, but it will challenge you and force you to more critically evaluate your beliefs. Like it or not, many of your colleagues and students are now challenging Freudianism, and the challenge is stiff, indeed. A Freudian needs to be prepared!

For those of you already skeptical of Freud's claims and disconcerted at the negative sequelae of his theories, this provides a wonderfully cogent dissection. It is easier to read than some of the other titles in this area (such as Malcom MacMillon's "Freud Evaluated, the Completed Arc"), yet covers the ground well.

Given the unexamined Freud worship found in most textbooks and class materials, it is a wonderful addition to a class textbook (and I use it as such). I highly recommend this book to all.

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Freudians Release Their Pent Up Hostility, March 21, 2002

By 

Robert Derenthal "bucherwurm" (California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Memory Wars (Paperback)

Frederick Crews really knows how to tap that deep reservoir of hostility found in modern Freudian psychoanalysts. In 1993 and 1994 FC wrote two essays in the New York Review of Books debunking Freud in the first, and tearing to shreds the recovered memory movement in the second.

These two essays and the letters in response to them have been put into the book The Memory Wars. As someone trained in experimental psychology you can guess my own personal bias in this matter. Crews discusses Freud's botched cases; his frequent vacillation in theory formation; some of his sillier theories; and his serious interjection of personal bias into the formation of his beliefs. The main problem with the whole Freudian system is the total lack of scientific evidence supporting it. Freudian psychoanalysis is founded on anecdote and supported by anecdotes. To be fair, much current non-Freudian therapy is also based on anecdote. Indignant Freud followers write back, and their letters are indeed interesting (and often pompous).

The second half of the book takes on the recovered memory movement. It would be great to poke fun at this movement if it weren't for the fact that it has caused so much damage to all parties involved. Symptoms checklists are published with the statement if you suffer from these symptoms you may be a victim of sexual abuse. Read the list and you will find that the majority of Americans will find that they have been abused. It's all a patient seduction game with the intent to make big money. Hospitals have even set up units to treat such patients (Having worked in the psychiatric hospital industry I am well aware of the "product lines" that such facilities set up in order to fill beds). Crews does an excellent job of dissecting the memory movement, and once again we get to read the indignant responses.

Those who believe that psychological therapy should be based on sound scientific evidence will love this book. Those who have accepted Freudianism with a religious like faith will, of course, hate it. To me this whole subject is analogous to the evolution vs. creationist debate. It's science versus pseudoscience.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars frontal attack on psychoanalysis and father Freud., August 28, 2002

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Memory Wars (Paperback)

This devastating book has two parts: (1) The Unknown Freud, where the reader gets a picture of Freud as a dictator, a megalomaniac and egotripper. A pope who alone knew the truth and who founded a secret commission to protect his 'church' against the heathen. He was a bad psychoanalyst (e.g. the Wolf Man case) and a venal man (e.g. the catastrophic Horace Fink case, where he tried to get his own hands on some money of the heiress).
I agree with the author that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience - statements cannot be tested and the research results cannot be verified uniformly. Although it is not totally without meaning (Karl Popper), it is not a science.
(2) the revenge of the repressed
A frontal attack on the caste of the psychoanalysts, depicted as 'religious zealots, self-help evangelists, sociopolitical ideologues, and outright charlatans who trade in the ever seductive currency of guilt and blame, while keeping the doctor's fees mounting.'
The author is particularly severe with their latest 'school' : the 'recovered memory movement', based on the rape of children by their parents (really!). This lead to false accusations and condemnations of innocent people. No wonder the author predicts an accelerating collapse of psychoanalysis as a respected institution.
A much needed and courageous book to halt a profession riding at full speed on a misty highway. And a much needed angle on Freud as a person, written in a style to slaughter the not so innocent father of psychoanalysis.
After reading this book, I agree with Peter Medawar, who called doctrinaire psychoanalytic theory "the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century".