Submitted by Norman Rosenblood, Nov 29, 2006 07:35

It is difficult to tell whether Peter Kramer's book is being reviewed or if one is being subjected to a barely disguised personal rant by Dr. Dworkin.. I must confess that to place Freud somewhere between Stalin and Hitler does give one pause, regardless of the authorship of the conclusion.

Equally stimulating, and ironically so, is the reductionism/conclusion that Freud "was just one more man of letters". W.H. Auden, among others, differed from Dworkin/Kramer in that he felt Freud had contributed something worthwhile to twentieth-century culture. I don/t think modern psychiatry, as well, would agree with Dworkin's view.. As drug driven as psychiatry is , in some cirles, it still recognizes the contribution Freud made to understanding depression, narcissism, masochism and of course the unconscious itself, particularly dreams and repression. There really are some psychiatrists who do not believe Freud has been discredited and actually use some of his theory to treat patients. There are also some psychoanalysts who share the same conviction.

Finally, to argue that Freud lives on, alas, solely because of his literary talent is truly an assertion that might just offend some people who have experienced psychoanalysis as beneficial having found relief from neurotic misery arising from unconscious conflict, debilitating narcissism and marvellous to say even real, not metaphoric, castration anxiety.

Norman Rosenblood, Ph.D

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