Freud and the Judaeo-Christian
tradition
Frederick Crews and Richard Webster – a
TLS exchange
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Milt Rosenberg's talk show files
WGN Radio, Chicago
22 September 2004
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‘‘TWO CRITICS OF FREUD CRITICIZE ONE ANOTHER. Add this, though it was published some seven years ago, to the list of great public-argumentative exchanges. It appeared in the Times Literary Supplement . . . and, of course, the argument persists as to whether there is anything of lasting worth in Freud.’’
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‘THE FOLLOWING EXCHANGE
of letters was published in the Times Literary Supplement in May,
June and July 1997. It took place in response to my review of Frederick Crews’s book
The Memory Wars. For this review, which was published in
the TLS on 16 May 1997, see The Bewildered Visionary (in which
the factual error referred to by Crews in his first letter has been
silently corrected).
_________________________________
The Times
Literary Supplement
23 May 1997.
_________________________________
Frederick Crews
writes:
Sir, - Richard Webster’s
discussion of my book The Memory Wars (May 16) is generally
sympathetic and discerning, but two points require comment. First, Webster
makes a factual error in asserting that Peter Swales and I “succeeded in
forcing the postponement” of the Library of Congress’s Freud exhibition.
Swales alone
originated and circulated a petition - signed by many scholars who were
alarmed by the orthodox Freudian line-up of the show’s organizers and
catalogue contributors - asking that some deference be paid to the full
range of judgment about Freud’s achievement. That request could have been
easily met, and in the end, as the guest curator Michael Roth gratefully
acknowledged to the signers, the petition did help him to widen the base
of representation in the catalogue. Meanwhile, however, the Library
stunned all parties by announcing that a shortfall in funding would
require postponement of the show. At that point, the American
Psychoanalytic Association, in the best tradition of Freud’s secret
“Committees”, appointed a clandestine “Task Force to Monitor Freud
Exhibit”, whipping up ire against the villainous Swales and Crews and
instructing academic Freudians to flood the Library’s director with
“citizen-scholar” letters of protest that were to be written on stationery
suppressing the writers’ psychoanalytic affiliation. The more public side
of this campaign - numerous opinion pieces denouncing the (wholly
imaginary) Swales- Crews conspiracy - evidently affected even so unFreudian a reader as Richard Webster.
Second, Webster’s
review, like his otherwise cogent book Why Freud Was Wrong, ends
with what can only be characterized as a rant against “Judaeo-Christian
rationalism”, with the present writer serving as Exhibit A. But my
objections to psychoanalysis are garden-variety empirical ones that
comport with common sense. I fail to see what is philosophically
“rationalist”, much less “Judaeo-Christian”, about exposing the Freudians’
chronic fudging of disconfirmatory evidence. If we must be on the look-out
for spilt religion, a prime candidate might be Webster’s own one-man
crusade to rescue science from its soulless materialism.
FREDERICK
CREWS,
Berkeley, California.
6 June 1997,
Richard Webster replies:
Sir, - In my review of The Memory Wars by Frederick Crews (May
16), I carelessly wrote that Peter Swales and Frederick Crews had “succeeded in forcing the postponement” of the proposed Library of
Congress exhibition on Freud. The implication of these words is that they
had set out to achieve just such a negative result. This was, as I know,
not the case, and I am most grateful to Professor Crews for making it
clear (Letters, May 23) that the aim of the action which Swales originated
was positive - namely to obtain proper representation in the exhibition
for a range of critical views of Freud.
It is a
pity that, after helpfully dispelling one misunderstanding, Frederick
Crews should propagate another by misrepresenting my own position. Nowhere
do I suggest, either in my review, or in my recent book, that there is
anything reprehensible about “exposing the Freudians’ chronic fudging of
disconfirmatory evidence”. Indeed, I specifically praise Crews for the
cogency and the effectiveness with which he does just this. My major
reservation about Crews’s approach, as I made clear in my review, is that
he sometimes goes further and allows his evident contempt for
psychoanalysis to obstruct his own attempt to understand it. As an example
of this attitude, I cite what I regard as Crews’s wholly indefensible
verdict on psychoanalysis - that it belongs in “history’s ashcan”.
Noting that the
tendency to anathematize the beliefs one disagrees with is part of our
Judaeo-Christian heritage, I gently suggested, using the inclusive first
person plural, that we need to moderate our rationalistic hostility to
psychoanalysis: “Only, perhaps, if we are able to temper our
Judaeo-Christian rationalism with a degree of tenderness, and recognize
the incidental or accidental wealth which is contained within the
psychoanalytic tradition, will we be able to assess Freud justly . . . .”
When Frederick
Crews responds to this moderately worded criticism of his position by
dismissing it as a “rant”, he exemplifies the point I am trying to make.
When he implicitly claims immunity from the Judaeo-Christian religious
heritage which has shaped our intellectual culture, he exhibits the very
rationalism he denies. His characterization of my position as being marked
by “spilt religion” is redundant, since, by my own analysis, spilt
religion is what afflicts us all. The real problems begin only when we
seek to deny this.
Its various
misrepresentations notwithstanding, I welcome Crews’s letter. For it at
least has the merit of making clear that, although Frederick Crews and I
agree about many aspects of Freud (and about the recovered memory
movement), we have fundamentally different views of Freud’s cultural
significance. At root we disagree about the ability of Western science as
presently constituted to deliver a profound and accurate understanding of
human nature. Professor Crews appears to regard the Western scientific
tradition as essentially sound in this respect, and believes that Freud is
a gross aberration from it. I believe that the Western intellectual
tradition is essentially unsound as a guide to human nature, and believe
that Freud exemplifies this tradition. My further argument, outlined in
the introduction to my book (Why Freud Was Wrong), is that
practically all modern theories of human nature, especially those
associated with structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, sociobiology and
evolutionary psychology, secrete disguised versions of Judaeo-Christian
orthodoxy.
The chasm of
disagreement which separates Frederick Crews’s estimate of Freud’s
significance from mine would seem to invite careful and measured
exploration. Crews declines to engage in such exploration. By describing a
serious argument about cultural history as a “rant”, he calls to mind
those defenders of psychoanalysis who, when faced by unwelcome criticism
of the founder of psychoanalysis, seek to diminish the seriousness and
integrity of this criticism by characterizing it as “Freud-bashing”. As a
frequent victim of just this shallow strategy, Crews should know better
than to engage in the same kind of strategy himself.
RICHARD WEBSTER
Southwold, Suffolk.
20 June 1997. Frederick Crews replies:
Sir, - I thank Richard Webster (Letters, June 6) for specifying that Peter
Swales and I never attempted to impede the holding of a Freud exhibition.
Nor, to my knowledge, has anyone else done so. Published allegations to
the contrary have served the evident purpose of turning a policy question
- should a prosperous therapeutic guild, espousing a patently mythic and
self-interested conception of its founder’s “discoveries”, wield exclusive
control over a federal historical exhibition of that founder’s career and
influence? - into a challenge to the Library of Congress to hold fast
against “censors”.
Time will
tell whether the rescheduled exhibition reflects the neutral eclecticism
professed by its guest curator, Michael Roth. Meanwhile, a check of
Freudian publications reveals that various groups are now trying to take
credit for what Horacio Etchegoyen, President of the International
Psychoanalytical Association, calls “the large mobilization which led to
the exhibition being reprogrammed for 1998, without altering its previous
organization” (IPA Newsletter, Volume Three, no 1).
Ever since
Webster sent me a draft version of his book Why Freud Was Wrong,
he and I have gone round and round, privately, about his hobbyhorse of “Judaeo-Christian rationalism”. I warned him that reviewers would be
dismayed by the way a generally sound, evidentially based critique of
Freud’s postulates metamorphosed, in the course of his book, into a
protest against the whole Western tradition of empirical enquiry. Webster
accordingly made some revisions - not, however, to keep this well-founded
prediction from being realized but to temper his praise of my
animadversions against psychoanalysis (“modern rational empiricism at its
most brilliant”) with bitter denunciation (“the pure opium of orthodoxy”).
Since the praise and blame attached to the very same feature of my work -
namely, its insistence that each Freudian notion be held accountable to
ordinary standards of corroboration - Webster’s eventual treatment of me
became scarcely less confusing than his treatment of Freud.
According to
Webster, my lack of residual “tenderness” towards Freud’s legacy is to be
deplored. Here, however, is his own assessment, from Why Freud Was
Wrong:
“Freud made no
substantial intellectual discoveries. He was the creator of a complex
pseudo-science which should be recognised as one of the great follies of
Western civilisation. In creating his particular pseudo-science, Freud
developed an autocratic, anti-empirical intellectual style which has
contributed immeasurably to the intellectual ills of our own era. His
original theoretical system, his habits of thought and his entire attitude
to scientific research are so far removed from any responsible method of
inquiry that no intellectual approach basing itself upon these is likely
to endure.”
This is, of
course, exactly my own view; just how it is to be tenderized without
recourse to self-contradiction is by no means clear from Webster’s book or
letter.
Webster now calls
for “careful and measured exploration” of our disagreement, but he
continues to misportray me as someone who holds no faith in anything but
materialist science, who conceives of himself as a purely rational being,
and who envisions a sterile utopian society that has been purged of every
illusion. I have repeatedly told him that all this is the sheerest twaddle
- that I simply hold the self-evident view that scientific claims ought to
be empirically tested - but to no avail. Webster’s laboured case against
“rationalism” as a late product of religious asceticism requires
contemporary exemplars, and I (in the good company of the late Sir Peter
Medawar) must be enlisted to play that far-fetched role.
The actual nub of
our difference can be found in Webster’s belief, spelled out in Why
Freud Was Wrong, that “no negative critique of psycho-analysis,
however powerful, can ever constitute an adequate refutation of the
theories which Freud put forward”. “Crews”, Webster complains, “shows
little enthusiasm for the project of replacing such beliefs with any new,
systematic theory of human nature.” Quite right. The idea that a body of
unfounded speculation as megalomaniacal in its pretensions as Freud’s
needs to be “replaced” before it can be refuted makes no more sense than
saying the same thing about palmistry or UFOlogy. If Webster fails to
grasp this elementary point, it is because he himself shares Freud’s
desire to play Prometheus, bringing humankind the gift of a soulful,
totalizing science that will enshrine in law his romantic preconceptions
about “human nature”. The outcome is indeed a rant, as readers of Richard
Webster’s vague and shadow-boxing closing chapters can discover for
themselves.
FREDERICK
CREWS,
Berkeley, California.
4 July 1997, Richard Webster replies:
Sir, - By far the
easiest way to seek to justify a misrepresentation is to engage in more
misrepresentations. Partly because I have a genuine regard for some of
Frederick Crews’s work, and partly because I know that this work is itself
frequently misrepresented, I had hoped that he would decline to take this
path.
But since Professor Crews persists (Letters, June 20)
in his need to engage in the contemptuous dismissal of those who contest
his views, and since in his most recent letter some of my key arguments
are first traduced and then consigned to the same ashcan in which he has
already deposited psychoanalysis, I hope I may be allowed to set the
record straight. The issues are much larger than any merely personal
squabble between Crews and me, and it would be a serious matter indeed if
bullying rhetoric and distortion of the kind he deploys in his last letter
were to be allowed to silence debate.
In the first
place, Crews contrives in his letter to give the impression that my book
Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis mutates from
being “a generally sound, evidentially based” critique of Freud’s theories
into “a protest against the whole Western tradition of empirical inquiry”.
Crews is right in one respect. When he read my book in manuscript, he did
indeed warn me that the last part of it might be construed in this way. So
horrified was I by the possibility of such a grotesque misunderstanding
that I completely rewrote the concluding chapters.
Knowing by this time
the itchiness of Crews’s trigger-finger, and something of the wildness of
his aim when faced with criticism, I actually anticipated that he would
persist in his misunderstanding. I therefore included a sentence intended
to clarify the situation beyond all doubt. For while I do indeed criticize
those (including Crews) who uncritically celebrate “empiricism” and
“common sense”, I emphasize that this does not imply a rejection either of
science or empiricism: “as should be clear from the criticisms of Freud
which have been made throughout this book, I believe that an empirical
approach is a prerequisite of genuine science and, indeed, that empiricism
is perhaps the most valuable element in the entire intellectual tradition
of the West” (p 448). The last part of my book is indeed a protest against
one aspect of the Western intellectual tradition. But what I protest
against is the way in which we have allowed the empirical, evidence-based
investigation of nature and human nature to be restricted and in some
cases eclipsed by religious or post-religious rationalism. It is to the
potency of such rationalism that I ascribe the success of a whole variety
of counter-empirical theories of human nature, including those put forward
by Freud, Marx and Levi-Strauss. In this respect, as in many others, my
book is less a protest against empiricism than a paean to it - or at least
to that kind of regenerate empiricism which I characterize as “truly
scientific”.
Having
practically inverted one of my arguments and systematically misstated my
own criticisms of his position, Crews goes on to quote a passage from my
book in which I deliver a particularly severe judgment on Freud. This
judgment, he writes, corresponds exactly to his own view, and any attempt
to moderate this negative view of Freud’s legacy would inevitably lead
into contradiction. What Crews omits to point out is that the passage he
quotes is actually extracted from a discussion
in which I deliberately
contrast the relative poverty of Freud’s own achievement with the
incidental wealth contributed to the psychoanalytic tradition by some of
Freud’s more talented followers. There is no contradiction here. There is simply the recognition that, as I
put it later in the book, “the intellectual estate of psychoanalysis is a
large and complex one”.
Crews ends his
letter by mocking me for suggesting that the best way of refuting
psychoanalysis is to replace it. This, according to Crews, “makes no more
sense than saying the same thing about palmistry or UFOlogy”. If Crews
really does believe that psychoanalysis should be treated as the
equivalent of palmistry or UFOlogy, then his reading of cultural history
is even more wayward than I had previously imagined. Here is another of
those many differences between Crews’s approach to Freud and mine. Such is
the contempt he feels for psychoanalysis and its founder that he appears
to want to push Freud to the periphery and consign him to the outer
darkness. In contrast, I locate Freud where I believe he belongs - at the
very centre of our culture. Crews’s dispute with psychoanalysis is a
dispute with an aberrant intellectual heresy he is intent on crushing. My
argument with psychoanalysis is simultaneously a critique of some of the
most powerful orthodoxies of our culture (including Judaeo-Christian
rationalism), which I believe need to be explained rather than expunged.
Readers of the TLS do not need me to indicate to them which of
these approaches is likely to lead to “rant” and which is more likely to
lead to reasoned debate.
RICHARD WEBSTER,
Southwold, Suffolk.
______________________
NOTE:
In view of Crews’s suggestion that my book ends by being ‘a protest against the whole Western tradition of empirical inquiry’, it seems worth adding here that, by the time this correspondence took place in 1997, both Frederick Crews and I had evidently forgotten the manner in which I ended the first letter to him I ever wrote — a letter dated 27 July 1993 asking whether he would be prepared to read my manuscript in draft form. My letter ended with these words: ‘I look forward to reading more of your essays, and take this opportunity of thanking you for tending the flame of empirically-based scholarship in a world where most people seem intent on snuffing it out.’
_____________
Readers who
seek a succinct summary of the larger historical argument of Why Freud
Was Wrong and the manner in which it bears on
Judaeo-Christian rationalism may find such a summary in what is, in my
view, the most interesting review of the book which has appeared.
This review, which notes and takes gentle exception to my ‘apparent
atheism and occasional flashes of scorn for Christianity’
was written in
1999 and contributed to the
amazon.co.uk
website as a ‘customer review’. It appeared under the name D. P. Hodgson - who turns
out to be the Reverend David Hodgson, Rector of All Saints Church in
Wokingham, Berkshire. I am most grateful to him.
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