Customer Reviews

Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology, and Critical Method

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

These are the first essays of Freud's and psychoanalysis' nemesis, Frederick Crews (see 'Memory Wars, Freud's Legacy in Dispute'), and they are more or less out-of-date.
They discuss seriously such forgotten and totally unimportant scribblers as Norman O. Brown or Lewis Feuer. And who's still interested in Herbert Marcuse's philosophy, which is also based on Freud's theories?
The discussions of the 1960s evaporated on the hot plate of new scientific discoveries in physics, biology or cosmology. The coming to the centre stage of critical rationalism sealed the death of psychoanalysis as a science.
The biographical part of the essay on Joseph Conrad is certainly a worth-while read, but the analysis of 'Hearth of Darkness' is psychoanalysis at its worst. The essay doesn't even discover why Kurtz did what he did.
The main discussion point of this book 'consider a literary text as a clinical document' seems to us now a blatant non-event. As the author says it himself, 'warping literary evidence to meet presuppositions'. (p. 64)
On the contrary, the fallacy of Wilhelm Reich's theory, his irrationality and unwillingness to be judged by rational scepticism, are clearly exposed.
The essays on the New Left of the 1960s are very revealing as they show that those 'philosophers' tried to convert literature into mere propaganda for their cause, a return to Agitprop and Proletkult.
His paragaphs on capitalism (e.g. p. 109) are still accurate and could have been written by Michael Parenti.
The last essay shows the evolution of the author from a devout adept of psychoanalysis to a more critical investigator ('biases characterize the social sciences' p. 159)
Three stars for its historical relevance.