Category: Letters To Editors

A poor analysis of the father of psychoanalysis
By Categories: Books, Letters To Editors

Click Here to Read:  A poor analysis of the father of psychoanalysis by Michael S. Roth in the Washington Post on September 15, 2017.

Click Here to Read:  Cutting ’Em Down to Size: A new dismantling of Freud shows the value of a critic’s well-honed hatchet By Laura Miller on the Slate website on September 5, 2017.

Click  Here to Read: Physician Heal Thyself   Part I by Frederick Crews in the New Review of  Books September 29. , 2011.

Click Here to Read:  Physician Heal Thyself   Part II by Frederick Crews in the New Review of  Books October 13, 2011.

Click Here to Read:   How we feel about Freud: Susie Orbach and Frederick Crews debate his legacy: Crews, an academic, thinks psychoanalysis is an unscientific jumble of ideas, while psychoanalyst Orbach would prefer not to throw the baby out with the patriarchal bias by Dr Frederick Crews and Susie Orbach on the Guardina website on August 20, 2017.

Click Here to Read:   ‘Freud: The Making of an Illusion,’ by Frederick Crews Reviewed By Carl Rollyson in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 25, 2017. Continue reading A poor analysis of the father of psychoanalysis

Letters to the Editor: Our Freudian Complex
By Categories: Letters To Editors

Click Here to Read:  Letters to the Editor: Our Freudian Complex on The New York Times on September 8, 2017.

Click Here to Read:  Cutting ’Em Down to Size: A new dismantling of Freud shows the value of a critic’s well-honed hatchet By Laura Miller on the Slate website on September 5, 2017.

Click  Here to Read: Physician Heal Thyself   Part I by Frederick Crews in the New Review of  Books September 29. , 2011.

Click Here to Read:  Physician Heal Thyself   Part II by Frederick Crews in the New Review of  Books October 13, 2011.

Click Here to Read:   How we feel about Freud: Susie Orbach and Frederick Crews debate his legacy: Crews, an academic, thinks psychoanalysis is an unscientific jumble of ideas, while psychoanalyst Orbach would prefer not to throw the baby out with the patriarchal bias by Dr Frederick Crews and Susie Orbach on the Guardina website on August 20, 2017.

Click Here to Read:   ‘Freud: The Making of an Illusion,’ by Frederick Crews Reviewed By Carl Rollyson in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 25, 2017.

Click Here to Read: He’s Back: Freddy Crews Claws Freud by George Makari, M.D. on his Revolution in Mind blog on the Psychology Today blogs on October 12, 2011.

Click Here to Read:  Freud the fraud: a new book reviewed by Jerry Coyne on the Why Evolution is True website.

Click here to Read: Psychoanalysis after Freud: A Response to Frederick Crews and Other Critics by Glen O. Gabbard, Sheldon M. Goodman, and Arnold D. Richards, which was previously published as Glen O. Gabbard, Sheldon M. Goodman, and Arnold D. Richards (Summer 1995). Psychoanalysis after Freud: A Response to Frederick Crews and Other Critics. Psychoanalytic Books, 6(2), 155-173, and appears with the authors’ permission.

On Crew’s Freud: The Making on An Illusion: Letter by Nathan Szajnberg
By Categories: Books, Letters To Editors
Dear Editor:

One of Frederick Crews’ earliest books (1963) was “The Pooh Perplex.” But, on Pooh, a professor of English literature can’t build much of an academic career. Then, he infected himself with “Freudianism” (not psychoanalysis nor Freud).  With no documented training nor expertise in the field, he has built his notoriety. This might be like a professor of English literature building a career on critiquing quantum mechanics or neuroscience  — oh, but readers would expect that person to have had some training in those fields.

Nevertheless, this English professor who professes to be an expert in Freud or psychoanalysis now writes a 746 page book critiquing Freud.

His book might better be described as a work of fiction: at best entertaining, but we wouldn’t expect fiction to be true.  Fiction is illusion, which is what Crews has written.

Then again, Crews’ Pooh book was a series of parodies of others. And now, he has parodied himself.
N. Szajnberg MD

Henry J. Friedman on “This Close to Happy”
By Categories: Letters To Editors

‘This Close to Happy’

To the Editor:

In his detailed and positive review of “This Close to Happy,” Daphne Merkin’s exploration of her lifelong struggle with a major depressive illness (Feb. 5), Andrew Solomon correctly identifies Merkin’s unrelenting honesty about herself as distinguishing her memoir from other tales of depression that are self-promoting or encourage the reader to admire the author. Reading Merkin’s book as a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst, I agree with Solomon’s praise for her unusual frank, self-critical voice, but I would locate the book’s strength in her attempt to differentiate developmental and emotional elements in determining her depression from genetic factors that can result in bipolar or unipolar depression. Continue reading Henry J. Friedman on “This Close to Happy”

Letter to the Editor of the Boston Globe by Henry J. Friedman
By Categories: Letters To Editors

Speculation and controversy over psychiatrists and psychologists attempting to diagnose President Trump are well outlined in the column by Sharon Begley. What is missed is the necessary distinction between our ability to comment on Trump’s mode of thinking and the act of making a diagnosis by any psychiatric criteria. When an individual continually overestimates the degree of danger coming at them or, in this case, at us as a nation; when danger is seen in everyone, including courts and judges and Mexicans; and when dissidents are all denounced as potentially dangerous, we are observing a form of paranoid thinking.

Such thinking, when linked to grandiosity, can radiate to the public and cause people to feel threatened and insecure about the danger that may result from our president’s character style. This is readily observable by any Continue reading Letter to the Editor of the Boston Globe by Henry J. Friedman