Freud Evaluated

Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc

Cover of the first edition
Author Malcolm Macmillan
Country Netherlands
Language English
Subject Sigmund Freud
Published 1991 (Elsevier Science)
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 762 (1997 edition)
ISBN 0-262-63171-7

Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc (1991; second edition 1997) is a book about Sigmund Freud by Malcolm Macmillan, in which Macmillan criticizes Freud's theories and procedures. The second edition of Freud Evaluated has a foreword by the critic Frederick Crews.[1] Freud Evaluated has been praised by many critics of Freud, but has also received more mixed assessments.

Summary

Macmillan describes his work as "a critical evaluation of Freud's personality theory". He maintains that, "Freud's method is not capable of yielding objective data about mental processes nor of potential value for those seeking to turn psychoanalysis into an acceptable historical or humanistic discipline." Discussing Freud's patient Anna O., Macmillan evaluates the views of the psychologist Hans Eysenck, who argues in Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985) that she suffered from tuberculous meningitis. Macmillan believes that engaging in retrospective diagnosis is extremely difficult, and notes that while Eysenck is one of several authors to have argued that Anna O. suffered from an organic malady, he gives a conflicting account of what the malady was.[2]

Criticizing Freud's theory of infantile sexuality, Macmillan notes that the psychoanalyst Irving Bieber arranged a partial translation of into English of a paper by the Hungarian pediatrician S. Lindner, who had reported a systematic study of sucking. Freud had used Lindner's observation that sensual sucking seems to absorb the attention completely and leads to either sleep or an orgasm-like response to develop his theory of infantile sexuality. According to Macmillan, while Bieber pointed out what he saw as "inaccuracies" in Freud's use of the paper, Freud was guilty of grossly misrepresenting Lindner to support his view that sucking had a sexual aim.[3]

Scholarly reception

Scientific and academic journals

Freud Evaluated received mixed reviews from the psychologist Robert R. Holt in Isis,[4] and Alvin Burstein in Modernism/modernity.[5]

Holt wrote that the book was "impressive and valuable", but nevertheless uneven in quality. Holt considered Macmillan's most original contribution to be establishing "how ineffectively Freud attributed cause in explaining the genesis and cure of neuroses." He credited Macmillan with carefully examining the theories Freud propounded up to 1910, showing which parts of those theories were derived from sources with which Freud was familiar and which were original contributions, and with revealing logical deficiencies in "the psychopathologies not only of Freud, but also of J.-M. Charcot, Josef Breuer, and Pierre Janet." Holt considered the second half of Freud Evaluated, in which Macmillan discusses "the complications of Freud's last two major versions of his theories, plus the contributions of his followers", to be less successful, writing that Macmillan focused on less important problems with the theories, and that some of his arguments were faulty. Holt granted that Macmillan made some correct criticisms of Freud's method of free association, but criticized him for treating it as though it were a psychological test rather than an innovation in interviewing. Holt concluded that Macmillan made little attempt at offering a balanced appraisal of Freud's work. He also wrote that Freud Evaluated suffered because of its "dry, dense style" and "bad editing and proofreading".[4]

Burstein wrote that Macmillan, "combines meticulous scholarship with episodic carelessness; he presents a naive view of science, of history, and of what we would have to call celebrities; and, like many writings in this genre, seems unable to decide whether he is evaluating Freud or the intellectual movement that Freud fostered."[5]

Evaluations in books

Freud Evaluated received a favorable reception from critics of Freud.[6][7][8][9] Author Allen Esterson called Freud Evaluated, "a painstaking scholarly and remarkably wide-ranging historically-based critique of Freud's theoretical framework which will remain an invaluable sourcebook for many years to come."[7] Author John Kerr commended Macmillan for his "exhaustive" bibliography of the psychoanalytic literature.[10] Author Richard Webster, writing in Why Freud Was Wrong (1995), described Freud Evaluated as a "valuable resource, full of meticulous readings and close study of the development of Freud's ideas". He also wrote that the book contained much important material absent from earlier works such as the psychologist Frank Sulloway's Freud, Biologist of the Mind (1979). However, he expressed disagreement with Macmillan's view of the French neurologist Charcot and medical issues related to hysteria. Webster suggested that Macmillan too readily accepts psychogenic theories of illness.[8] Crews suggested that the republication of Freud Evaluated in 1997 "advanced the long debate over psychoanalysis to what may well be its decisive moment." Comparing the work to previous critical discussions of Freud, such as Sulloway's Freud, Biologist of the Mind (1979) and the philosopher Adolf Grünbaum The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984), he commented that "its importance can be measured by what those predecessor books had left undone."[1] Crews later described Freud Evaluated as "the single most important book about Freud's ideas".[6]

The philosopher Todd Dufresne called Freud Evaluated, "a strong, comprehensive, although fairly dry, examination of the early history and theory of psychoanalysis".[9]

References

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Crews 1997. p. vii.
  2. ↑ Macmillan 1997. pp. xvii, xxiii, 10, 684.
  3. ↑ Macmillan 1997. pp. 259, 311-2.
  4. 1 2 Holt 1992. p. 698.
  5. 1 2 Burstein 1998.
  6. 1 2 Crews 2006. p. 352.
  7. 1 2 Esterson 1993. p. ix.
  8. 1 2 Webster 2005. pp. 560-561.
  9. 1 2 Dufresne 2007. p. 162.
  10. ↑ Kerr 2012. p. 592.

Bibliography

Books
  • Crews, Frederick (2006). Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays. Emeryville: Shoemaker Hoard. ISBN 1-59376-101-5. 
  • Crews, Frederick; Macmillan, Malcolm (1997). Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-63171-7. 
  • Dufresne, Todd (2007). Against Freud. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-5548-1. 
  • Esterson, Allen (1993). Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8126-9231-4. 
  • Kerr, John (2012). A Dangerous Method. London: Atlantic Books. ISBN 978 0 85789 178 5. 
  • Macmillan, Malcolm; Crews, Frederick (1997). Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-63171-7. 
  • Webster, Richard (2005). Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: The Orwell Press. ISBN 0-9515922-5-4. 
Journals
  • Holt, Robert R. (1992). "Book reviews: Twentieth century". Isis. 83 (4).   – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
Online articles
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