Stephen Wilson - Introducing The Freud Wars: A Graphic Guide

HE HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH TELLING LIES ABOUT HIS CLINICAL PRACTICE, MORAL COWARDICE IN HIS THEORIZING, COLLUSION IN MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE AND OVERWEENING AMBITION.
ACCUSED OF DRUG ADDICTION AND THE DEMONIZATION OF CHILDREN.
REPROACHED FOR BOTH UNORIGINALITY AND MYTH-MAKING, STATING THE OBVIOUS AND MYSTIFYING US WITH THE OBSCURE.
HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR DELAYING OUR RECOGNITION OF INFANTILE SEXUAL ABUSE AND FOR THE INVENTION OF FALSE MEMORIES OF INFANTILE SEXUAL ABUSE.
TO HAVE ENCOURAGED BOTH LIBERTINISM AND PURITANISM, MISOGYNY AND HOMOPHOBIA.
HARBOURED INCESTUOUS CURIOSITY ABOUT HIS DAUGHTER, TO HAVE COMMITTED ADULTERY WITH HIS SISTER-IN-LAW AND TO HAVE PLANNED THE MURDER OF HIS FORMER FRIEND, WILHELM FLIESS.

Freud has been described as an evil genius and one of the worlds great hypocrites. And if all this were not enough, his theories have been blamed for alienating us from ourselves and undermining the very values upon which the whole of Western civilization is based.

Opponents of psychoanalysis have anticipated its impending death from the moment it was born. Alfred Hoche, Professor of Psychiatry at Freiburg, took that view in a 1910 paper read at Baden-Baden. On observing this movement, one can take comfort from one thing, namely the certainty that it will abate before long.

A PSYCHICAL EPIDEMIC IN THE ANNALS OF MEDICINE, SAYS HOCHE.
ECHOED BY BORIS SIDIS, A PSYCHOPATHOLOGIST IN AMERICA THE MAD EPIDEMIC OF FREUDISM WHICH TAKES US BACK TO THE MIDDLE AGES

Again, in 1910, at a Congress of Neurologists and Psychiatrists in Hamburg, Professor Wilhelm Weygandt pounded the table with his fist: This is not a topic for discussion at a scientific meeting; it is a matter for the police! In 1911, David Eder presented the first paper on psychoanalysis to a meeting of the British Medical Association: A Case of Obsession and Hysteria Treated by the Freud Psychoanalytic Method

THE ENTIRE AUDIENCE EXPRESSED ITS OUTRAGE BY TROOPING OUT OF THE ROOM WHEN HED FINISHED SPEAKING

In 1925, psychoanalysis was once more dismissed by another American psychologist J. McKeen Cattell as not so much a question of science as a matter of taste, Dr Freud being an artist who lives in the fairyland of dreams among the ogres of perverted sex. Karl Kraus (1874-1936), the Viennese satirist, summed up the hostility to psychoanalysis in his magazine Die Fackel (The Torch): Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy. But he went further

IF MANKIND, WITH ALL ITS REPULSIVE FAULTS, IS AN ORGANISM, THEN THE PSYCHOANALYST IS ITS EXCREMENT!

This extreme vilification of psychoanalysis in the early 1900s has been sustained to our day. Compare what Kraus said then with the definition of psychoanalyst in Professor Stuart Sutherlands Macmillan Dictionary of Psychology (1989)

THEY PICK OUR DREAMS AS IF THEY WERE OUR POCKETS
A PERSON WHO TAKES MONEY FROM ANOTHER ON THE PRETENCE THAT IT IS FOR THE OTHERS OWN GOOD.

More recently, the British philosopher Roger Scruton condemned Freud in a BBC radio broadcast of May 2001.

FREUDS THOUGHTS ON INFANTILE SEXUALITY ARE THE THOUGHTS OF A PAEDOPHILE
I DIED OVER 60 YEARS AGO, BUT THEY STILL GO ON HATING PSYCHOANALYSIS!

Psychoanalysis has grown beyond what can be solely identified with Freud and his writings. Modern psychoanalytic theory and practice have evolved out of a hundred years of clinical experience accumulated on a worldwide basis. But a politicized movement against it continues to grow. A group in Britain calling itself Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility was formed in 1995 to speak out against racist, sexist and homophobic practices in psychoanalysis.

In 1996, the New York Times reported the postponement of a major exhibition on Sigmund Freud by the Library of Congress following protests by scholars. Nevertheless, even its most dedicated detractors today, such as Richard Webster in