Freud and His Critics Paul Robinson
Wars against Freud have been waged along virtually every front during the past decade. Now Paul Robinson takes on three of Freud's most formidable critics, mounting a critique of the historian Frank Sulloway, the psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson and the philosopher Adolf Gruenbaum. Frank Sulloway contends that Freud took most of his ideas from Darwin and other contemporary thinkers. Jeffrey Masson charges that Freud caved in to peer pressure when he abandoned his early seduction theory ( which Masson believes was correct) in favour of the theory of infantile sexuality. Adolf Gruenbaum refutes Freud's claim to have grounded his ideas - especially the idea of the unconscious - on solid empirical foundations. Under Robinson's cross-examination, the evidence of these three accusers proves ambiguous and their arguments biased by underlying assumptions and ideological commitments. Robinson concludes that the anti-Freudian writings of Sulloway, Masson and Gruenbaum reveal more about their authors' prejudices - and about the Zeitgeist of the past decade - than they do about Freud.