Barely contained in 666 captivating pages Freud: The Making of an Illusion, penned by esteemed Professor Emeritus Frederick Crews is an incisive new work that lacerates the allegedly fraudulent practices of a “Machiavellian scoundrel” who seduced and enslaved generations of patients. Professor Crews, a former Freudian and a “true believer” discredits the character and dismantles the entire work of guru, once venerated “father of psychoanalysis”.
Crews contends Sigmund Freud was a swindler, liar, a molester, whose thirst for fame and riches were the single motive to double-cross his friends, betray his wife and cheat his patients. Crews convincingly assails Freud as a charlatan who intentionally suppressed scientific data in unrelenting self-promotion that severely “crippled women and morbidly confused men”.
In fascinating detail, Crews demolishes Freud’s deceptive “fantasies”--- the ever popular but loopy “seduction theory”, outlandish fixations, eccentric complexes--- both Oedipus and Electra--- and many more mental disorders. Freud diagnosed these originating in childhood trauma and relieved only upon entry into “the dark continent of the unconscious.” Crews asserts that Freud’s tools to treat mental illness, mainly via prolonged psychoanalysis, “free association” or “talking therapy,” have zero foundation in science. Crews offers riveting research and compelling evidence, citing recently unlocked personal letters between Freud’s wife, Martha and notable publications that portray Freud as a very dark individual with serious personal psychological issues and zero credibility as a healer.
Born in Vienna in 1856, Freud graduated from medical school but did not enjoy its practices and had little sympathy for his patients. By 1875 Crews details Freud’s five year use and promotion of cocaine, "a lot of cocaine,” that clouded his judgement and may have contributed to several of his “screwball” theories.
Crews follows Freud’s studies in Paris with respected neurologist Jean Martin- Charcot who used hypnosis, to assess the etiology of hysteria in women. Soon thereafter, Freud opened his clinic in 1886 mainly treating very rich women. Freud diagnosed almost every female patient with “hysteria” prescribing long term psychoanalysis as the cure. He brilliantly decimates Freud’s mantra: “All mental issues are caused by trauma of a sexual nature in childhood.” Crew points to new research that shows, none of Freud’s patients, most notably Anna O (aka Bertha Pepperheim) who sought treatments for mental ailments saw significant relief from symptoms.
Crews concedes Freud’s incalculable impact in psychoanalytic literature and the imagination of the 19th and 20th century. Today neither Freud’s methods nor theory are regarded as a cure-all for the mentally afflicted. Many former Freudian practitioners have dismissed Freud’s work as unsubstantiated, unscientific piffle. Others including Crews, reduced Freud’s writings to the realm of literary fiction, to be read as entertainment or as curious fantasies akin to those fabricated by Arthur Conan Doyle whom Freud loved to read. Clear proof notwithstanding, Freud: The Making of an Illusion will not dissuade Freud’s cultic followers from vividly “recalling” or “remembering” childhood trauma, reclining on a soft couch comforted by echoes of “the master’s voice.”
