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Last year, while I was making a podcast documentary about Sigmund Freud, I got the chance to interview Frederick Crews, a renowned critic of Sigmund Freud and author of the book “Freud: The Making of an Illusion”. You can listen to the full interview above (the documentary is in Swedish, unfortunately). Here’s a short summary: Professor Crews has spent decades examining Freud’s life and work, challenging many of the widely accepted ideas about the father of psychoanalysis. Our conversation shed light on some of the key aspects of Freud’s personality and how they influenced his theories. One of the main traits that Crews emphasized during our conversation was Freud’s ambition. Crews explained that Freud’s ambition was divorced from scientific curiosity: “He had a scientific career briefly before he took up psychoanalysis, but his real interests were never scientific, they were literary and philosophical and historical. He really wanted to be a great personage in the world, and he was determined to make it happen. And to do so quickly as possible, even – you might say – suddenly.” This ambition led Freud to endorse various theories without thoroughly examining the evidence for or against them. He was not driven by empirical investigation but rather by the desire for public success. Crews pointed out, ”What he did was to appeal over the heads of his scientific colleagues to the broad public, and to present himself as a great discoverer, as a kind of legendary figure. He was a great success at that, but that’s not science.” ”What he did was to appeal over the heads of his scientific colleagues to the broad public, and to present himself as a great discoverer, as a kind of legendary figure. He was a great success at that, but that’s not science.” Freud’s scientific career before psychoanalysis was quite brief, but he had a talent for microscopic studies of human and animal anatomy. Unfortunately, he lacked the empirical rigor one would expect from a successful scientist. ”Freud was incapable of self-criticism, if anything went wrong with his treatment, it was somebody else’s fault, always, it was never his. And, you know, in a typical scientific career someone might be lucky enough to discover something at some point after many years of labor and many disappointments and frustration, but a scientist will keep at it until he or she has exhausted the rational possibilities. And as I said this simply just was not Freud’s way, he didn’t have either the temperament or the circumstances in his life that would enable him to show such patience,” Crews explained. In his view, Freud’s impatience and lack of self-discipline hindered his ability to test his theories rationally and led to frequent abrupt changes in his ideas. Clip: Frederick Crews explains the uncritical belief in Freud and psychoanalysis, drawing parallels to religious faith. Cocaine Controversies To understand the roots of Freud’s theories, one also has to examine his early…
