Einstein’s Mythology
If you read Allen Esterson’s dissection of the April 22 ‘In Our Time’ on Freud, perhaps you were inspired to listen to the programme. Interesting, wasn’t it? The matter-of-factness, the confidence, with which the participants talked of Freud’s discoveries as if they were settled knowledge (or normal science, as one might say). As Richard Webster amusingly points out, it’s as if people sat around the Radio 4 studio agreeing on how flat the earth is. Just so. Or how pretty the fairies look as they dance around the lawn, or how alarming it is when the poltergeists throw the dishes and boxes of pasta onto the floor, or how long and tedious the trip to Alpha Centauri is and why doesn’t the airline serve better food.
Possibly the most irritating bit of all is toward the end, when Juliet Mitchell talks enthusiastically about Freud’s correspondence with Einstein after the War. He told Einstein that he – Einstein – would think Freud was talking about mythology – but then so is Einstein himself, Freud and Mitchell concluded, in Mitchell’s case at least with an air of triumph. Oh for heaven’s sake, I muttered, throwing dishes and boxes of pasta onto the floor. Mythology indeed! Oh yes, that’s all it is, that’s all everything is, it’s just stories, it’s just narrative, all of it, astrology, psychoanalysis, physics, geology, therapeutic touch, quantum mechanics – it’s all just a story someone makes up that other people find persuasive and/or explanatory, and that’s all there is to it. You bet.
Melvyn Bragg did at least take issue with that bit of nonsense, though he didn’t take nearly enough with the rest of the show. But there’s something so – so having it both ways about that maneuver, that it sets the teeth on edge. When talking about Freud, treat his work as well-founded settled knowledge; when talking about Einstein, treat both of them as purveyors of mythology. It’s very similar to the maneuver often used by defenders of religion. When rationalists take issue with the truth claims of religion, pretend that religion has nothing to do with truth claims, it’s merely an attitude of awe and wonder, or an impulse to be good; when rationalists are not around, talk about God and God’s will. On the one hand, Freud is not nonsense, he discovered true things about hysteria, repressed memory, the unconscious, jealousy; on the other hand, Einstein and the rest of the scientific gang are story-tellers. More heads I win tails you lose. It won’t do.
Drives you mad, dunnit? Just two examples of how embedded these asumptions are; the Freud material by Webster you link to is from a series called ‘Great Philosophers'(!!!) and in a review of a book called ‘The Place of Enchantment’ the ‘History Today’ writer ends ‘at a time when Darwin and later Freud were dispelling superstition’. Darwin maybe but surely Freud was adding a whole new structure of superstition to our beliefs about human behaviour, not getting rid of earlier ones.
To be fair, they say that -Freud- said that Einstein was talking about mythology, rather than explicitly saying it themselves – although you get the impression that there is a seething relativism being suppressed when Bragg points out that scientists test their theories.
Do you get socialied into psychoanalysis in arts faculties, does this explain why people working in experimental psychology and medicine regard it as quaint and dated while English professors and historians think it is practically cutting edge?
Chris, it sure does. I know, I saw that about the Great Philosophers Series. Even more infuriating is that Freud is included in the Cambridge Companion series of philosophers – right in there with Hume and Kant and the rest. Excuse me? Philosopher? Sez who!
The usual, and slightly more cautious, dodge is to call him a “thinker”. That’s safe enough, we can all call ourselves thinkers, and who will say us nay? But in Freud’s case of course it’s still very irritating and deceptive, since p.a. is supposed to be a science, therapeutic, curative, etc – except when the heat’s on and then it becomes a ‘hermeneutic’ discipline. But that’s not the way the gang on ‘In Our Time’ were talking about hysteria, what they find in their clinical practice, etc – those were truth claims, knowledge claims. Heads I win tails you lose.
PM, I know, and I think I made that clear in the comment – Mitchell was talking about what Freud said. But there was a note of enthusiasm in her voice. She wasn’t saying ‘This is what Freud said to Einstein and isn’t it bollocks’ nor ‘This is what Freud said to Einstein, make of it what you will.’ Exactly, about the ‘seething’ (good adjective) relativism.
Yes, about the arts faculties, at least some in some places. Though I have to admit I’m a little staggered to learn that Mitchell is a professor of psychoanalysis at Cambridge. Why does C’bridge have such a professorship, I wonder? And what faculty is it in?
I’m not big on psychology. I think it’s an over-inflated category that accounts for very little.
Wittgenstein’s take on Freud was that he did not discover the “Unconscious” as Columbus discovered America, but rather that he had merely invented a new notation for describing “psychological reactions”. Whether it is a particularly good or perspicacious notation is another matter. He suggests comparing unconscious thoughts to an unconscious toothache; what sense can be made of that? Further, he states that Freud confused causes and reasons and created an “abonimable mess” thereby. In fairness, there may be some reason in the matter for considering the cross-section of reasons and causes, but the abonimable mess part sounds about right. He also does a take down of Freud’s pose as an heroic scientist, braving reactionary opposition.
Freud posited a psychological determinism, on analogy with the materialist determinism of Newtonian mechanics. Now it may be that a case for psychological determinism could be made, but Freud never made it. It is simply an a priori assumption. The other side of his procedure amounts to a sheer ad hominem- (another unacknowledged borrowing from Nietzsche). The endless quest for hidden motives resembles skeptical exorbitation, as well as, paranoia itself. And his approach not only over-pathologizes everything, but it allows for no account of regular human agency, by which any actual difficulties could be assessed. This combination of psychological determinism and accusatory suspicion constitutes the Freudian double -bind. Add to it a Platonically objectivist intuition in the reading of “transference” and you have the summa of his “science”.
Once you strip away the Cartesian privilege of consciousness, it is simply unsurprising that a fair portion of the organic behavioral decisions of the organism might not be processed through consciousness. But the Freudian Unconscious is rather the inversion of the Cartesian account. This is especially the case if you follow thru to the Lacanian reading of Freud. The Cartesian mind is a container whose contents consist in representations. The Freudian unconscious consists entirely in representations.
In the 70’s, an Italian classical philologist published a book on the “Freudian slip”. It is most of all the method of “free association”, as revealing “unconscious” motives in accordance with psychological determinism that constitutes the sophistical, “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” quality of Freudian interpretation and “explanation”. He examined the accounts Freud offered of such slips, in terms of elicited associations and subsequent interpretations of motives, and counterposed accounts of each such slip, in terms of standard philological accounts of mistakes in textual transmission. It was a rather convincing demonstration.
If Freud can be said to have discovered anything via his account of psychological determinism, it is the role of identifications in the formation of personality structures. Oral, anal, and Oedipal instincts and stages? This amounts to saying, in a reified jargon, that at first one swallows one’s parents whole, then one digests them, then one excretes them. Now identification involves making oneself over in the guise of an other. There is ambivalance and ambiguity here, as to whether one is oneself or the other. Further, one is tied to the “object” of identification, given over to it, such that there is constriction and constraint, compulsion and repetition, in the maintenance of an identification. The task of maturation and growth is one of separation, differentiation and individuation. But such identifications could be said to be “unconscious” precisely in the sense that they are merged with the basic conditions of conscious experience, just as the conceptual schemas at the basis of the operation of conscious discriminations are not routinely noticed. They would require some sort of anomalous condition, by which they could be “externalized”, to be noticed. Now the notion of identification is simply a version of mimesis. How wide a role does mimetic learning play in the constitution of behaviors, especially more complex sets of behaviors, in the animal kingdom? It would seem that this is not such an esoteric matter, (though in the human case, there is the supervenient role of linguistic communication). The goal of the therapy would be to bring about a controlled form of a “nervous breakdown”, so as to allow a less constricted personality structure to form, (just as in physiological growth, there must be a breakdown and reformation of structure for such growth to occur.) I would doubt that such a process and outcome could be guaranteed by a methodological procedure, still less by a dogmatic theory. It seems to me to be much more of a hit-or-miss proposition, one dependent not just on the skills, but also the personal qualities of the therapist, such as a capacity for relatedness and honorableness, as well as, the peculiar fit between therapist and patient. So the therapy would not just be expensive and time-comsuming, but risky, as well, and thus one with a doubtful rate of success in its outcomes.
Hmm. I think it should be clear that Freud’s work has little value in scientific terms (at least in terms of how we define those terms now; Freud was after all working before Popper.) But I do have some trouble with what seems to be a movement to discard Freud completely and I’m not sure why you are so opposed to the philosophy classification. In particular, it strikes me as rather a dodge to compare him to Hume and Kant as if all philosophy was metaphysics and was therefore devoid of testable truth claims. The truth claims of something like civilisation and its discontents don’t seem necessarily different in kind to me to those of Thus Sprach Zarathrustra or Being and Nothingness. Shuld Nietzsche and Sartre therefore be discarded? Of course, it helps that no-one would actually seek to put the thought of either philosopher into practice; but one can hardly claim that neither intended their thought to be divorced from practice.
“surely Freud was adding a whole new structure of superstition to our beliefs about human behaviour, not getting rid of earlier ones.”
A very dubious assertion. Harold Bloom once made a rather good case to the effect that there were very few concepts in Freud that hadn’t been at least implicit in Western culture; from the above quotation it sounds as if Wittgenstein might have had a similar reaction. Such concepts might not have correct truth claims but I’m far from being convinced that their importance is contingent on their truth value.
Although Mitchell is Professor of Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies and head of the Department of Social and Political Sciences where she lists her field as ‘Psychology’ on the departmental webpage (in Cambridge psychology is split between experimental psychology and social and developmental psychology in the social and political sciences faculty), I think she got where she is today via ‘gender studies’. Isn’t she famous for saying that Freud and feminism weren’t incompatible or somesuch nonsense?
So I don’t think Cambridge has done anything more than recognise the prediliction for psychoanalysis in the arts and pseudo-social sciences – I think that ‘and gender studies’ is probably telling.
John, what Freud did wasn’t psychology – and more to the point, psychology isn’t what Freud did.
Richard, but why should Freud be called a philosopher? Just on the strength of Civ and its Discontents? (Which is the one book of his that I can come up with when I ponder this question.) He didn’t call himself a philosopher, after all. Why should he be re-classified as one now? That’s a real question as well as a rhetorical one – maybe there is a reason, but I don’t at the moment know what it is.
“it strikes me as rather a dodge to compare him to Hume and Kant as if all philosophy was metaphysics and was therefore devoid of testable truth claims.”
Eh? Hume was a metaphysician?
“Such concepts might not have correct truth claims but I’m far from being convinced that their importance is contingent on their truth value.”
So…they’re all the better for being false? Not sure I agree with you there!
Oh but you didn’t say ‘better’ you said ‘importance’…Sly. Yes, Freud was important all right. No one denies that. But one can be dead wrong and still be important – unfortunately.
PM, yes, I saw that when I got around to googling Mitchell. Still, I think Cambridge’s recognising that is kind of unfortunate. I don’t think universties ought to be in the business of recognising bogus disciplines, especially when they are disciplines that make genuine truth claims. That’s the infuriating bit. Listen to that In Our Time if you haven’t already – there’s not a bit of tentativeness in what any of the three say, they assert all of it as if it were uncontroversial established well-known fact – when it’s much more like established well-known nonsense.
What I mean is that she was, as far as I can ascertain, previously lecturer in gender studies. When they gave her a professorship they said it was in ‘psychoanalysis and gender studies’ – by which I take it to mean psychoanalysis -in- gender studies rather than professor in psychoanalysis and professor in gender studies.
So despite being a ‘trained’ psychoanalyst (although interestingly she doesn’t seem to have any higher degree, and I’m not sure what her undergraduate degree was in, although she seems to have lectured in english at some point) she looks to have taken the arts route (where psychoanalysis is considered ok) but because of the slipperyness and ambiguity of the term ‘gender studies’ managed to end up in the social and political sciences faculty instead of an arts faculty.
So far from being a professor in psychoanalysis (which is what her title would suggest) it looks to me more like she is essentially an arts or humanities professor that likes using psychoanalytical approaches to her subject – and also happens to be a psychoanalyst.
“He didn’t call himself a philosopher, after all.”
So what? It would hardly be the only case when someone is retroactively reconsidered. Even in Freud’s own lifetime that process had started; Musil called him a pseudopoet, later Bloom called him a cultural mythologist. Freud’s view of himself is wholly irrelevant.
In answer to why he might be re-classified, the answer is simply that he clearly can’t be considered a scientist by the standards of what we now call science but he had a massive influence on scores of writers and thinkers throughout the early twentieth century, which might just possibly suggest that there might possibly be something about his work worth preserving. Whenever this subject comes up you’re always very quick to concede Freud’s importance but that never actually seems to translate to anything.
“Eh? Hume was a metaphysician?”
Yes, that is how I would consider him. Given that much of his work is concerned with the nature of reality, it hardly seems an especially radical descripton.
“So…they’re all the better for being false? Not sure I agree with you there!Oh but you didn’t say ‘better’ you said ‘importance’…Sly. Yes, Freud was important all right. No one denies that. But one can be dead wrong and still be important – unfortunately.”
I notice you’ve avoided answering the question about whether Nietzsche and Sartre should be discarded (the source for the article you cited certainly seems to suggest that his answer is yes). I just don’t think that truth claims are the only way to consider someone like Freud, anymore than it would be for Dickens and Austen (unless you think authors never make truth claims that they would wish to have taken seriously?).
Oh, I see, PM, thanks.
Mitchell does talk about her clinical experience on that In Our Time. In a rather frightening way, as is so often the case with psychoanalysts.
Richard,
I think we were writing simultaneously – I did a new N&C on the subject while you wrote the above.
I don’t think Freud’s view of himself is wholly irrelevant. It’s not necessarily decisive, to be sure, but I do think it’s part of the matter. I do for instance think it’s very important that he insisted that he was a scientist.
“he had a massive influence on scores of writers and thinkers throughout the early twentieth century, which might just possibly suggest that there might possibly be something about his work worth preserving.”
Hmm. It might, but it also might not. It doesn’t necessarily suggest that. And then in any case, what is the relevance of the one to the other? Is it necessary to call Freud a philosopher in order to preserve his work? If so, why?
And more to the point – if he can’t be considered a scientist, yet he himself was insistent that he was one – does that not indicate something about him that would (or should) disqualify him for being a philosopher? That’s how it seems to me. If he can’t distinguish invented stories from science, then why should he get the imprimatur of philosophy?
“Whenever this subject comes up you’re always very quick to concede Freud’s importance but that never actually seems to translate to anything.”
Not sure what you mean by that. What should it translate to? Admiration, respect? But I concede his importance in the sense that he was hugely influential – that’s all. So was Hitler influential, so was Mao, so is Deepak Chopra. Lots of people are influential, and therefore ‘important’ – that doesn’t mean they’re right or useful or interesting, just that a lot of people think they are.
About Hume: okay. I thought he was a skeptic about metaphysics and therefore not one, but perhaps that’s wrong.
True about Nietzsche and Sartre. That’s because I don’t know. The Nietzsche I’ve read does seem to me to be mostly unargued assertion – but I haven’t read anywhere near all of him. I think Sartre does do at least some arguing, but I’ve read even less of him. So I’m not sure what I think – except I do think even they have a better claim than Freud does, if only on the basis of more books on broadly philosophical subjects.
How did Dickens and Austen get into the mix? Does anyone call them philosophers? Is there a Cambridge companion to them in the philosophy series rather than the literary?
And they’re a bad analogy with Freud even apart from the philosophy question, because he wasn’t a novelist. I really disagree that one can consider Freud apart from his truth-claims. The truth-claims are central! And if they’re all nonsense, then that does make a difference. He wasn’t writing poetry or even essays. If you take away the truth-claims, there’s not all that much left.
As is usual for web discussions, I think we may be getting hung up on semantics. I don’t necessarily think philosopher is a good term for Freud (I think Bloom’s term is a lot better), but I think it’s reasonable to try to find a way to preserve Freud’s place in the history of ideas while making it clear that he has no standing as a scientist (about which I have the same view as you do) – by all means invoke a certain license. For someone with as profound an influence as that, I happen to think a certain license can be justified. By all means judge him as a scientist and be harsh is doing so, but I think the claim to be a scientist was tenuous even at that time.
And I do think comparing Freud’s influence to Hitler is very unfair (you might be closer to the mark with Jung); most of that influence seems to me to have been richly productive for the arts in particular. Without Freud much of early twentieth century art would have been very different; I’d say for the worst. I hardly say that for Mao or Hitler; let’s keep Godwim’s law out of this.
“How did Dickens and Austen get into the mix? Does anyone call them philosophers? Is there a Cambridge companion to them in the philosophy series rather than the literary?”
As far as I recall Freud’s place in that series was created by the individual you linked to so he could write an entire volume on why Freud should be considered unimportant. That strikes me as a very silly thing to do, so I wouldn’t consider that important one way or another. As for Austen and Dickens, I’m simply observing that literature is full of empirical truth claims which we don’t test (in those cases, claims relating to politics and society – would you trust Dickens as a poltical theorist?). How we regard these things depends on the field; as for Freud not being a novelist, much of my point is that many writers did indeed regard him as being exactly that.
Incidentally, referring to your later post, I happen to think art is inherently elitist and not inclusive – but Freud’s influence there is so pervasive one hardly has to raise the bar. As for philosophy, sorry, but a fair chunk of it happens to be completely indifferent to truth claims and argument – Nietzsche being a case in point and one you can hardly dismiss as not being a philosopher. It strikes me that trying to apply the scientific method to philosophy is probably the alien concept.
On Hume, he was sceptical about most things, including metaphysics, but most fields are more than capable of absorbing their own critics. As a loose classification I think it was probably acceptable, but pigeonholing writers and philosophers is never easy.
Ah well, I don’t think there’s anything a bit wrong with getting hung up on semantics – I think they’re important.
Hmm. I think Freud’s place in the history of ideas is pretty secure – at least for a good while. His as it were status or prestige may not be, but I don’t think he’ll be simply ignored by the history of ideas, because he’s certainly a big part of it. The claim to be a scientist was indeed (from what I’ve read) tenuous even at that time – but that only makes the whole matter of his reputation the more interesting. He was taken as a scientist by non-scientists for decades, and still is by a great many of them. Again – one has only to listen to that In Our Time to hear that. They talk about hysteria and Freud’s views on same as if they were well-established.
No, I wasn’t comparing Freud to Hitler, I was just saying that importance is quite a different thing from value or truth.
As for art – maybe so, maybe so.
“As far as I recall Freud’s place in that series was created by the individual you linked to”
No – different series. So there are two – which is two too many! No, the Cambridge companion has been out for awhile – several years anyway. And Webster didn’t say Freud should be considered unimportant! He said he was wrong! That really is an important (er – significant) difference! It’s Freud’s very importance, in fact, that makes it worth pointing out how wrong he was. No doubt Sally Smithers of Gopher Prairie was very wrong about a lot of things too, but since she didn’t influence anyone but her cat, it doesn’t matter. It’s not important. But Freud’s influence is. And of course literature is full of truth claims we don’t test, but I don’t consider Freud as part of literature. And I think it’s a mistake to do so – I think that gives him a kind of cover that he ought not to have. It’s exactly the same dodge that defenders of religion resort to when pressed (and not the rest of the time, which makes it obvious what a dodge it is): that it’s just a thing like poetry or music, that one can’t ask whether it’s true or not.
“As for philosophy, sorry, but a fair chunk of it happens to be completely indifferent to truth claims and argument”
Well – surely you know that’s at least controversial. That a good many philosophers do think that indifference to truth claims and argument means it ain’t philosophy. Also that some philosophers do in fact think philosophy should get ever closer to science, and others think it can at least usefully interact with it.
True, pigeonholing is never easy…But I’ll never accept that Ayn Rand belongs in the philosophy section!
“How we regard these things depends on the field; as for Freud not being a novelist, much of my point is that many writers did indeed regard him as being exactly that.”
So it is just an unfortunate aside that he failed in his treatment of so many patients and spawned a pseudo-scientific semi-cult which dominated psychological therapy for decades?
And still does in some places?
This kind of double-think, or having it both ways, seems to have a long history when it comes to Freud. Whenever a critic of psychoanalysis points out its yawning logical holes or shoddy empirical support, psychoanalysts simply say they’re talking about myth, religion, spirituality or meaning. But then they go right back to talking like scientists again, and claiming their ideas have unassailable validity.
Psychoanalysis is a lot like theology. Freud’s follwers can tweak his theories to an extent (just as theologians can tweak understandings of scripture or doctrine), but the tweaking can never be more than limited. A psychoanalyst cannot admit that repression, castration anxiety, etc are bunk without ceasing to be a psychoanalyst. Most of them aren’t willing to do that.
Phil
Exactly. I keep noticing exactly that – the Freudian-defense move is identical to the religion-defense move. On the one hand, oh no, it’s got nothing to do with truth claims, it’s just a story or poetry or a feeling; on the other hand, it’s all about truth claims. Just depends on who the audience is. Quite fascinating, really – sort of a case study.
In fact, maybe I’ll hop on a plane to Vienna and deliver a paper to someone on ‘The Aetiology of Double-Think.’
Yeah, this discussion has reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write something comparing defenses of psychoanalysis to defenses of religion for a while now. I got all motivated to write the article after finally reading Carl Becker’s “Denial of Death” last year. But then I didn’t.
Becker’s book won a Pulitzer back in ’73, and it makes a cameo appearance in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall.” I think its appeal has a lot to do with its “existentialization” of Freud’s theories, which allows people to keep Freud at arm’s length and embrace him at the same time. Have it both ways, in short. It gives Freud’s ideas about repression and the like a brand new (and equally unsupportable) meaning, while also passing itself off as cutting edge scientific discourse about the human mind.
Phil
Ah – well keep us in mind along with those nice skeptical people – those other nice skeptical people.
Phil
It’s Ernest Becker.
“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity – designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.”
Cheery stuff!
Jerry:
(smacks forehead in astonished embrassment)
Yes, you’re right of course. Carl Becker was a famous scholar of colonial and early United States history. What a weird mental slip that was.
It is cheery stuff, isn’t it? The whole book is full of passages like that – you can find one on almost any page. The thing that amazes me, though, is that so many people swear that Becker is perfectly describing their own states of mind. I asked Frederick Crews about Becker in an e-mail a while ago, and he told me that Becker’s lectures at University of California, Berkeley were always standing room only events. It’s an interesting question why so many people are so willing to buy into this sort of silliness.
Phil
“It’s an interesting question why so many people are so willing to buy into this sort of silliness.”
I think a large part of it is that it is a kind of academic equivalent of a teenager’s penchant for all things Goth!
It’s kind of romantic and sexy to stand toe to toe with death, and call its bluff. There are two problems, though:
1. A complete lack of empirical evidence for these kinds of claims;
2. Death always wins;
The next issue of The Philosophers’ Magazine has a forum on death. I think there’s an article on Becker in it. I know I mentioned Becker in a roundtable thing. In a critical way, of course!
Great, I’ll look forward to reading the next TPM.
You may have something with that adult version of Goth idea. More generally, I think Becker’s book appeals to the kind of folks who like all-encompassing models of life but are suspicious of traditional religion. These kinds of people often also like ideas that have a kind of hermetic quality – ideas that run against received opinions and make adherents feel they’re in on a great secret.
Many Becker fans seem to enjoy thinking they know something the rest of us don’t. We’re in “denial of death,” but not them. It’s interesting that a friend of mine who fell hard for Ayn Rand’s Objectivism in his late teens also glommed onto Becker’s book last year. Both authors seem to fatten his vanity by claiming to impart the true meaning of life unavailable to the collectivist second-handers in Rand’s thought, or the death deniers in Becker’s. And both authors convey their messages in scientific/rationalist terms, which allow people to feel completely rational and intelligent while swallowing this stuff.
Phil
It’s too interesting that you both mentioned Goth and Objectivism here, because I was thinking about both before getting online. About Goth or rather the Gothic in connection with Freud – it occurred to me that one reason for his immense (and in many ways inexplicable) attraction is the Gothic aspect. The ‘Unconscious’ as a Gothic dungeon or monster or madwoman in the attic – hidden, scary, dark, inaccessible, dangerous, creepy, etc. And about Objectivism because of a quick look at Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things, which has quite a lot on Rand.
Both Freud and Rand often convince people who are sanely skeptical about other things. There’s something interesting about that…
“Both Freud and Rand often convince people who are sanely skeptical about other things. There’s something interesting about that…”
Yes, there is. Many Freudians and Randians are atheists who know all the logical arguments against revealed religion, but gobble up the simplistic ideas of pyschoanalysis or Objectivism without hesitation.
Of course, we shouldn’t forget the promised therapeutic benefits of both schools of thought when trying to understand their appeal. Both Objectivism and psychoanalysis market themselves partially as ways of coping with reality – new ways of thinking to liberate us from our problems. Both of them had strong appeal in the post-war era, and promised to help us tap our true potential and become more successful and affluent. They provided new and allegdly rational ways to be all we can be, and get past the problems holding us back, whether those problems are second-handers, repressed traumas or denial of death.
By the way, Jeff Walker’s book “The Ayn Rand Cult” is a great supplement to the chapter in Shermer’s book. It features interviews with some of the major figures in the Objectivist movement, and does an excellent job of exploring the oddities of “the world’s most unlikely cult.”
Phil
Yes, I’ve been meaning to read that Ayn Rand Cult book for years.
True about the promised benefits. But I’m especially curious about people like lit crits and even some philosophers who take Freud seriously for reasons that seem to be quite separate from therapeutic effect – who take him seriously as a Thinker. I really do have a hard time understanding that – understanding what they think is left once one peels away all the plain error and fantasy.
I find this all immensely frustrating. This site is supposed to be about the importance of scientific objectivity and research. Sure, Freud wasn’t objective and neither are a lot of his followers. But there is a mountain of research that has been published in peer reviewed journals that tests aspects of Freud’s theory. Why has no-one else mentioned this research? See Fisher and Greenberg’s ‘Freud scientifically Reappraised’ and Kline’s ‘Fact and Fantasy in Freudian Theory’ for reviews of that research from scrupulously fair minded writers. Oh, and check Adams et als (1996) study of homophobia and homosexual arousal in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology; it’s a scream.
Thanks, Mark. Is any of it available online that you know of?
Hmm…I see that Fisher and Greenberg are both clinical psychologists. Clinical psychologists tend to have different ideas about what constitutes evidence and research from the ideas that research psychologists have. That’s actually central to the whole problem.
Full names would help, by the way.
Here’s a reasonable account of the study.
http://www.virtualcity.com/youthsuicide/adams.htm
However, it omits reference to one important control and two results.
(i) All participants viewed homosexual pornography, heterosexual pornography and lesbian pornography. Order of presentation was counterbalanced to control for order effects (i.e., ‘left- over’ arousal!).
(ii) There were no significant differences in arousal to the other types of pornography, so the higher levels of arousal to the homosexual pornography were not due to a general higher level of arousal.
(iii) When asked to estimate their arousal the only case of under- estimation was from the homophobic men on their arousal to the homosexual pornography.
To me this demonstrates repression (they claimed to be heterosexual but were aroused), denial (they underestimated their arousal) and reaction- formation (they were homophobic despite having homosexual desires).