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| Freud Bashing Still In Vogue
by John M. Curtis Copyright May 20, 2000
"Freud’s legacy has largely migrated from the scientific realm to the cultural. Today, his texts are more likely to be read in English departments than in medical schools," claims Los Angeles Times science writer Usha Lee McFarling, proving, if nothing else, that even well intentioned journalists get their wires crossed. Who’s she kidding? Freud was never standard reading in medical schools, he was widely read in psychiatric residencies, graduate schools of professional psychology, and, of course, psychoanalytic training institutes. He’s read in English departments because his prose is considered so literate and richly textured with mythology and cultural anthropology that it generated distinct schools of fiction and history. Far from discredited, Freudian notions form the bedrock of character and plot development. Generations of the most respected theorists in the mental health field—since Freud’s death from jaw cancer in 1939—based their theories and therapeutic techniques on Freud’s findings. Yes, Freud may not be read or quoted in its original form, but scores of psychoanalytic writers owe much of their 'new' theories to Freudian concepts. Even pulp novelist L. Ron Hubbard—the controversial founder of the Church of Scientology and author of Scientology: The Modern Science of Mental Healt--based the lion’s share of his discoveries on popular Freudian ideas. Wasn’t it Freud who discovered that childhood trauma resulted in abnormal adult behavior? Reinventing the wheel, isn’t it Scientology that claims to clear individuals of engrams, referred to as repressed trauma in Freudian circles, to promote sound mental health? Napolean Hill, author of the multimillion bestseller Think and Grow Rich, based almost his entire work on Freud’s concepts of sexuality and the subconscious mind. Popular motivational guru Tony Robbins, author of Unlimited Power, touts the arcane ideas of neurolinguistic programming, a hodgepodge of hypnosis, behavior modification, and persuasion techniques, based largely on Freud’s concept of the unconscious. Even contemporary hypnotherapy—including the respected methods of the ex-psychoanalyst Milton Erikson—base much of the techniques and therapeutic outcomes on Freud’s structure of the mind. While many current thinkers invent new vocabularies, their ideas are still remarkably similar to Freud’s. Blaming violence in the school yard, bedroom, post office, or elsewhere on chemical events doesn’t even come close to giving useful explanations. When marriages go awry or celebrities—and even presidents—self-destruct, it’s fruitless to blame it on chemical imbalances. Freud’s original Project for Scientific Psychology—abandoned in 1893—attempted to relate all psychological events to cellular biology and chemistry. "Freud started in science. He was 100% identified in science. That’s what he cared about," said Sulloway, claiming that most of Freud’s ideas have fallen into disrepute. Freud abandoned traditional science not because he lost his funding but precisely because it couldn’t adequately explain or treat the vast complexity of mental problems. Freud detoured from conventional medicine when its theories and techniques offered little practical hope for his patients. Dispensing useless bromides, performing lobotomies, chaining people to padded cells, and demonizing the mentally ill as evil or the product of faulty genetics, offered little practical help. Today’s cost-cutting mental health climate pushes the pendulum toward inexpensive biological treatments. Stretching biotech to the breaking point, today’s managed care atmosphere trashes Freudian explanations because it’s too costly to pay for real psychotherapy. Mapping the human genome offers little hope to people suffering from depression or panic attacks. Prescribing Prozac for marital disharmony or Ritalin for behavior problems makes about as much sense as giving Vitamin C to cure toothaches. Cost-cutting and gate-keeping can’t ignore the reality that trendy biotech explanations have more to do with politics and money than what’s good for patients. Most people know that you get what you pay for. Expecting dramatic results from taking 'happy' pills sounds more like wish fulfillment than reality. Discrediting Freud based on today’s economics of mental health offers little help to real people suffering with real problems. When a gatekeeper pushes medication, it’s time to question whether it’s really the best form of treatment. Freud began the century offering hope for doctors and patients looking to treat a wide variety of hopeless mental conditions. One hundred years later, economics—not appropriate care—dictate the most expedient course of treatment. With most managed care companies looking to save money and discouraging psychotherapy, it’s more profitable to blame behavioral problems on faulty biochemistry and bad genetics. Even advocating 'brief therapy' and phony wellness programs hardly conceals the real motives behind how today’s health care companies turn a profit. When science demands simple explanations, it’s ludicrous to mystify common human problems by blaming them on questionable explanations about bad neurochemistry and genetics. With more marriages and families on the rocks and with violence, suicide and mental illness on the rise, Freud bashing only turns back the clock on quality care. About the Author John M. Curtis is editor of OnlineColumnist.com and columnist for The Los Angeles Daily Journal. He’s director of a Los Angeles think tank specializing in human behavior, health care, political research and media consultation. He’s the author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma. |
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ne hundred years since Sigmund Freud published his landmark work The Interpretation of Dreams, today’s budget-busting, cost-slashing, bottom-line managed mental health care system has no place—or money—for Freud’s brand of talking therapy known as psychoanalysis. "The scientific literature is clear," said Frank Sulloway, author of Freud: Biologist of the Mind, "Freud was wrong in almost every important respect," discrediting twenty-seven volumes of the most discussed, debated and brilliant literature produced in the 20th century. Raising as much controversy today as it did then, Freud’s discovery of the unconscious—introduced in 1900—permeates Western philosophy, art, filmmaking, religion, and, yes, current theories of psychosomatic medicine, establishing unequivocally the link between mind and body. Today’s scientists, funded by publicly traded pharmaceutical companies and driven by insatiable profits, assure that current scientific literature supports the bogus claim that most human problems are biological and treatable with medications.|
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