Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis [Paperback]

Richard Webster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 1996

In this engrossing new study of Sigmund Freud’s life and work, Richard Webster has set out to provide a clear answer to the controversies that have raged for a century around one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. Tracing Freud’s essentially religious personality to his childhood, Webster shows how the founder of psychoanalysis allowed his messianic dreams to shape the ”science” he created and to lead him ever deeper into a labyrinth of medical error. Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, Why Freud Was Wrong is destined to become a classic work.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a formidable critique of Freud's theories and modern psychoanalytic practice, English journalist Webster argues that Freud's mentor, French neurologist Jean Charcot, misdiagnosed as traumatic hysteria what were actually cases of injury-related brain damage and epilepsy. Misled by this error, Freud, in Webster's opinion, himself misdiagnosed many of his early cases, seeking to explain physical ailments or illnesses with recourse to patients' childhood emotional traumas. To Webster, psychoanalysis, for all its rationalism and professed secularism, is a "crypto-theological system," a modernized reworking of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, sexual realism and restraint. He portrays Freud as the founder of a messianic movement that placed at its core a confessional ritual: the therapy session. Freud's hero-worship of crackpot Berlin physician Wilhelm Fliess, his demonizing of dissidents such as Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, his inflating of successful therapeutic results and his overbearing, aggressive, even prosecutorial attitude toward his patients come under scrutiny. Yet, though Webster calls psychoanalysis a pseudoscience, he contends that it nevertheless has yielded productive insights about human nature and society because of its internal logic, sophistication and emotional nuance.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Journalist Webster explores the thesis that Freud misdiagnosed his early hysteria patients?essentially founding psychoanalysis on a false premise. Moreover, he likens the psychoanalytic movement to a religious cult, with Freud, the messianic figure, rigidly controlling its development. And, using Freud as examplar, Webster reveals what he considers to be a cryptic Judeo-Christian ethos embedded in the foundations of the scientific world view. The author doesn't address an essential point, however: at its inception, psychoanalysis did add a critical dimension to a growing theory of human behavior and spirituality, which included Darwin's work and continued with Jung's. Still, Webster's readable book presents an effective argument, rivaling Henri Ellenberger's The Discovery of the Unconscious (Basic Bks., 1970). Recommended for larger collections.?Dennis G. Twiggs, Winston-Salem, N.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (September 16, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465091288
• ISBN-13: 978-0465091287
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #300,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( F ) > Freud, Sigmund

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Freudian myths, November 15, 2000

By 

A. H. Esterson (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis (Paperback)

Among Webster's many scholarly achievements in this meticulous and devastating examination of Freud's life and work, he exposes the extraordinary number of myths about Freud which abounded in the twentieth century. A minor one is that Einstein was a great admirer of Freud. This is erroneous. In a letter to one of his sons in the early 1930s Einstein wrote that he was unconverted by Freud's writings and believed his methods dubious - even fraudulent (cited in *The Private Lives of Albert Einstein*, by Roger Highfield and Paul Carter, p. 233).

28 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent job but not finished yet, February 6, 2003

By 

Feri Kovács Clinical neuropsychologist (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis (Paperback)

Richard Webster has done a marvellous job to show how fraudulent Freud really was. More revealing is that all ideas about the human psyche are to be questioned hereafter: the existence of defense mechanisms, existence of the death wish, the existence of the Ego, Superconscience and Id. If you ask me: nothing of these speculative concepts are really true. Webster shows quite convincingly the case against the 'diagnosis' conversion-hysteria. Still accepted in modern psychiatry but a complete misnomer: intrapsychic energy to be converted in physical pain/disorders, how? The whole Freudian thinking is still present in movies, television soaps and more frightening in forensic psychiatry, the military, national intelligence agencies, police departments. Obviously the 'dark side of mankind' has an extremely attractive side to it. What is frightening and disturbing is the fact that this whole conceptual pseudo-thinking about the human psyche (originated with Freud) really is a religionlike belief system. Very difficult to replace and really hindering better therapies for people who are suffering emotionally. Richard Webster's book should be thé textbook in psychology en psychiatry courses to show two things: 1. how our ideas about the human psyche and emotional system is largely based on a pseudo-theory and therefore a better alternative model of emotions and cognitions should be sought (for example in scientifically driven cognitive behaviour therapy).
2. how science really should work and should not work.
The strange thing is that Webster's book, to my knowledge, is nowhere in the world, really a textbook in psychology or psychiatry courses. Freud is still taught as if he has done some marvellous things and if some of his ideas are still correct. This is the most unbelievable thing of it all. And really frightening.

36 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Today - Freud would have been arrested, October 26, 2000

By 

Marianne Bergvall (Bergen Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis (Paperback)

At the back of the book, a reviewer is quoted: "What a great demolition job!" And it really is. It puts Freud and all of his theories right where they belong: On history's scrapyard. The seriousity of this book is evident to the reader, one does not doubt that Websters side of the Freud story reveals some long hidden truths. Webster shows that all of Freuds "scientific findings" were nothing else than the thoughts of a very small man who hated mankind, and hated children most of all. Unfortunately, Freud also had a natural authority that made others fear and respect him, and tragicly enough, also believe him. Had Freud lived today, he would have been bancrupt hundred times over from loosing lawsuits, and perhaps also would have been put away behind bars. What Freud has done to patients is really an outrage. Webster also writes that his book is just the beginning - he has opened a door to the biographical facts, where most people have hesitated to go in before him. Freud protected himself from all future critisism by raising the self-made shield: "If you question Freuds truths, that proves that there's something psychologically very wrong with you". Now everyone can search without being brandmarked and stigmatized in this way. And as more people will start digging, the more we will see of the damage Freud did to his patients. And it will become more evident the damage he has done to the conception of Man for a whole century. After the demolition job is done, Webster concludes: Man is nothing even remotely what Freud has described us to be. And he follows up with the most important question of all: When we are nothing of what has been the dominating psychological view for hundred years - who and what and how are we then? And he encourages each and every one to join in the creating of a new and ultimately much more optimistic understanding of Man.