The Freudian Fallacy

The Freudian Fallacy, first published as Freud and Cocaine in the United Kingdom, is a 1983 book about Sigmund Freud by medical historian Elizabeth M. Thornton. She argues that Freud became a cocaine addict and that his theories are the direct outcome of his use of cocaine.

Summary

Thornton, a medical historian,^[1] calls Freud "a false and faithless prophet" and his theories "baseless and abberational."^[2] She argues that Freud became a cocaine addict and that his theories were shaped by this addiction.^[3] She believes that Freud's ideas were the direct outcome of his use of cocaine,^[4] "a toxic drug with specific effects on the brain."^[2] She argues that the unconscious mind does not exist.^[2] She also deals with Freud's relationship to Jean-Martin Charcot and criticizes the concept of hysteria, arguing that many of the conditions Freud diagnosed as hysteria were actually organic illnesses that either Freud himself or 19th century medicine as a whole failed to recognize. In her view, agoraphobia is invariably caused by disorders of the inner ear which affect the sense of balance.^[3]

Scholarly reception

The Freudian Fallacy was described by historian Peter Gay as "a model in the literature of denigration" in his Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988).^[2] However, the book has been praised by several writers critical of psychoanalysis, including psychologist Hans Eysenck in his Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985).^[1][3][5] Social and cultural theorist Todd Dufresne considers it a notable work on the history of psychoanalysis, and the single best work on Freud's cocaine period.^[5]

Cultural historian Richard Webster, writing in his Why Freud Was Wrong (1995), calls Thornton's book one of the most interesting contributions to Freud studies. He considers Thornton's discussion of Charcot and hysteria to be more significant than her argument that Freud's theories were shaped by his cocaine use. Webster observes that while not explicitly feminist, The Freudian Fallacy has sometimes been endorsed by feminists. He compares it to Jeffrey Masson's The Assault on Truth (1984), noting that both books are marked by hostility to Freud and psychoanalysis. Webster believes that Thornton takes her argument about the organic basis of hysteria too far, and that its excesses tend to discredit the more reasonable aspects of her book. He nevertheless writes that some of her claims are both original and persuasive, and that her detailed review of the medical context within which Charcot and Freud worked contains many neglected insights.^[3] Webster criticizes the press coverage that Thornton's book received, writing, "In Britain, Thornton's claims about Freud's addiction to cocaine generated a small amount of sensational and shallow coverage in The Sunday Times Magazine." According to Webster, it was largely ignored in the British quality press, with the exception of hostile reviews in The Times Literary Supplement and The London Review of Books, the latter of which included a false accusation of anti-Semitism that was later withdrawn with an apology.^[6]

References

Footnotes

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Books