Psychoanalysis k – Sam Franz – rks seniors Cover Letter

AFF Answers

Dufrensne

36.This is made up

Antonio Greco: How do psychoanalytic studies compare with academic work done in other fields?

Todd Dufresne: Very poorly. Frankly, in very few fields is the level of scholarship so slipshod. The blame for this problem can be traced to the fact that Freud and his close followers established psychoanalysis outside the university system by creating their own training institutes. For the goal of these institutes was less research and intellectual activity than the protection and transmission of doctrine from generation to generation. It was politics and religiosity, rather than ideas, that gave birth to institutional psychoanalysis in the 1920s

Of course, this situation explains why analysts and their patients generally make for such lousy intellectuals, but it doesn’t explain why intellectuals themselves have produced so many lousy books on psychoanalysis. It really is depressing to see how many bad books have been stamped, and will continue to be stamped, with the library code BF 173.

AG: So the academics are not much better than the publishing analysts and their patients?

TD: Although there are exceptions, of course, the field is overrun by advocates who have lost sight of anything resembling intellectual standards. In this respect, blind loyalty to psychoanalysis can often be correlated with the number of years someone has spent on the couch. Obviously it is hard to conclude, after significant emotional and financial investment, that psychoanalysis is groundless and, therefore, a waste of time. However, corruption comes in many forms and really can’t be reduced to money and time spent. In my line of work I am more disturbed by the corruption that accompanies the intellectual investment in psychoanalysis. Certainly you don’t need to have been analysed for years to become a zealous advocate on behalf of Freud and psychoanalysis. All you need to have done, depending on the size of your ego, is deliver a lecture or publish a book review, article, chapter, book or books, to become incapable of backing out of the enterprise. One goes public with one’s ego and becomes incapable of retracting false beliefs.