If Freud Is Dead, Why Do
Psychologists Keep Attacking him?
Attacks by research-oriented psychologists on
psychoanalytic theory have been common in the last fifty years (e.g., Eysenck,
1985). Time declared that Freud was “dead” in 1993 (Gray, 1993). A
recent book proposing that psychiatric disorders could be seen as rational
choices opened with an attack on the psychoanalytic conception of the
unconscious (Rofe, 2000) and cited numerous articles and reviews indicating
that psychoanalytic ideas were incorrect (e.g., Holmes, 1990).
Why are psychologists not convinced after all these years
that psychoanalytic theory is correct? There is no guerrilla movement by
psychoanalysts trying to convince us that the theory is valid. Almost of the
papers in the psychoanalytic journals are clinical in nature and are read
primarily by psychoanalytic clinicians.
Is it possible that the attacks on psychoanalytic theory
continue, backed up by research failing to produce evidence for the validity of
the theory, are a result of reaction formation? The theories of psychologists
reject or ignore psychoanalytic ideas, yet the psychologists themselves know
either consciously or unconsciously that many of the psychoanalytic constructs
and processes are true. We know from our own experience that psychoanalytic
theory is valid. For example, Rofe would replace the concept of the unconscious
with the concepts of divided attention, absent-mindedness, distraction and
normal forgetting. But my personal experience as an adult of realizing that I
was angry at my parents, a realization that resulted in the lifting of chronic
depression, fits the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious far better that
Rofe’s concept of distraction. I wasn’t unaware of my anger because I was
distracted or absent-minded. The anger was unconscious!
If one raises children, one can witness psychoanalytic
processes such as introjection, the Oedipal conflict, repression and reaction
formation in operation. Indeed, I used personal examples to illustrate these
processes in a textbook I wrote on theories of personality (Lester, 1995).
A behavior therapist once told me of being asked to treat
a woman with chronic hiccups. He found out that she was anxious about being
pregnant, having had sexual intercourse for the first time. He arranged for a
pregnancy test which was negative, and the hiccups stopped. He was annoyed
because he knew that the symptom made sense from a psychoanalytic perspective,
and yet he was a behavior therapist and did not “believe in” psychoanalysis.
I asked a literature professor who had published analyses
of characters from Greek plays and from Shakespeare (Faber, 1970) why he chose
to interpret literary characters from a psychoanalytic perspective rather than
from other perspectives. He said that, using a psychoanalytic perspective, he
almost always found something to say about the characters and their
motivations. Other perspectives would have little to say in most of these
situations.
Psychoanalytic theory has the broadest application of any
psychological theory, suggesting hypotheses for situations for which other
theories would have no applicability; and it is consistent with our experience
in many cases. Research may often fail to confirm predictions derived from the
theory, but perhaps we should trust our experience more than research findings.
References
Eysenck, H. J. Decline
and fall of the Freudian empire. New York: Viking, 1985.
Faber, M. D. Suicide
and Greek tragedy. New York: Sphinx, 1970.
Gray, P. The
assault on Freud. Time, 1993, 142(November 29), 46-51.
Holmes, D. S. The
evidence for repression. In J. L. Singer (Ed.) Repression and dissociation,
pp. 85-102. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990.
Lester, D. Theories
of personality. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis, 1995.
Rofe, Y. The
rationality of psychological disorders. Boston: Kluwer, 2000.
