Freud, Biologist of the Mind

Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend is a 1979 work about Sigmund Freud by Frank Sulloway.^[1] It has been credited with being the key work that discredited psychoanalysis as science.

Background

Sulloway's work was partly inspired by medical historian Henri Ellenberger's The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970).^[2]

Summary

Sulloway retraces Freud's intellectual development and places psychoanalysis in a historical context larger than that accepted by its proponents. Using sources such as Freud's personal library, Sulloway ties Freud's thinking to contemporary biological theories,^[1] and shows that Freud took care to hide the fact that his psychology was derived from neurobiology.^[3] Sulloway criticizes the "psychoanalytic legend": the idea that Freud was a lonely hero who, in a hostile intellectual climate, created ex nihilo an entirely new psychology through sheer personal brilliance and courage. Sulloway believes that such myths are sectarian propaganda and obscure Freud's real greatness. Sulloway explores in detail the influence of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis, Iwan Bloch, H. H. Ploss, Friedrich S. Krauss, Albert Moll, and Wilhelm Fliess on Freud,^[1][4] as well as the relation of Freud's theorizing to that of Charles Darwin.^[5]

He demonstrates that Freud carefully read Untersuchungen über die Libido sexualis, Moll's 1897 study of the nature and development of the sex drive, several years before writing Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). Though mainly concerned with Freud, Sulloway supplies biographical details and a photograph of Moll.^[1] Discussing the reception of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), which he notes has generally been considered Freud's single most important book,^[6] Sulloway shows that the work received a respectful reception by reviewers and that Freud's complaints that it had been ignored were unjust.^[7] Sulloway considers The Interpretation of Dreams to be the "greatest" of the early works which "place Freud among the most creative scientific minds of all time."^[8]

Scholarly reception

Freud, Biologist of the Mind gained considerable attention and praise upon its publication. Erwin J. Haeberle, writing in the Journal of Sex Research, called the work a model of scholarship, and noted that Sulloway's discussion of the influence of Moll and other sexologists on Freud gave his work special importance for sex researchers.^[9] Philosopher Adolf Grünbaum credits Sulloway with showing that "Freud's successive modifications of many of his hypotheses throughout most of his life were hardly empirically unmotivated, capricious, or idiosyncratic", arguing that this disproves Karl Popper's argument that psychoanalytic ideas cannot be falsified.^[10] Psychologist Hans Eysenck praised Sulloway's work in his Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985), crediting it with exposing many myths which have accumulated around Freud.^[11]

Psychiatrist Allan Hobson praised the book.^[3] Historian Peter Gay was more critical. Gay called Sulloway's book "overargued" and "irritatingly self-indulgent",^[12] and found it to suffer from "overkill", writing that while it presents itself as "a great unmasking document" it brings, "the essentially old news that Freud's theory had a biological background". Nevertheless, Gay found the chapters analyzing Freud's dependence on Fliess and "nineteenth-century psychophysics" to have value.^[4] Psychoanalyst Joel Kovel credits Sulloway with making it clear that there is no way of denying the immense impact of biological thinking on Freud.^[13] Literary critic Frederick Crews writes that Sulloway "revolutionized our idea of Freud's scientific affinities and habits", and helped pave the way for subsequent works such as Grünbaum's The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984), and Malcolm Macmillan's Freud Evaluated (1991).^[14] Crews has, however, criticized Sulloway for being too sympathetic to Freud.^[15] Literary critic Alexander Welsh considers Freud, Biologist of the Mind the key work that discredited psychoanalysis as science.^[2] He rejects the charge that Sulloway was motivated by the desire to sully Freud's reputation, noting that Sulloway would have been incapable of writing the book had he not been sympathetic to Freud.^[15]

See also

• Ritchie Robertson

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Books

Journals