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Re: VN vs. Freud (fwd)
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From: Brian Boyd <b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>
A belated reply:
To the student who writes asking about Freud, can I say first that
I think that a professor who says "to disagree with X is to lose the
ability to say anything meaningful at all," whoever X is, is saying
something extremely dangerous for anybody, especially anyone in a
university, to say. He or she is in some very dangerous company. Is
not the right to criticize the first basis for all rational
discussion and all hope of intellectual advance?
Next, I would say that Ben WalshÂ’s pointer to Popper is useful, but
the reference should not be not so much to _The Open Society and Its
Enemies_ as to _Conjectures and Refutations_ (1963), pp. 33-36.
PopperÂ’s essential points are these: 1) that Freudian theory thinks
it can explain any behavior, but something that claims to explain
everything can in fact explain nothing (astronomers donÂ’t predict an
eclipse perhaps will happen at this point and perhaps wonÂ’t happen,
or some combination of the two; biologists donÂ’t say that humans have
two legs, or four, or six, or however many you find: they rule out
certain possibilities): the very confidence of Freudians that they
can explain ANY human behavior is actually their weakest point
(Adler, as Popper, notes, was just as sure that he could explain
every kind of human behavior from his very non-Freudian first
premise); 2) that Freud and Freudians have a very flexible and well-
developed systems for evading criticism, and that anything that rules
itself unavailable for criticism is unscientific and irrational
(Popper defines rationality rather well as the ability to accept
criticism, a definition obviously unknown to your professor).
Then IÂ’d like to add to Brad BuchsbaumÂ’s comment that the professor
canÂ’t be in psychology. Psychology has many many fascinating active
branches (developmental psychology, cognitive psychology,
evolutionary psychology, neuropsychology, psycholinguistics, family
psychology, etc. etc.), in none of which Freud is seen as anything
but primitive. I recommend Brian Vickers, Shakespearean
Appropriations (1993), which has a detailed critique of Freud (and
summary of previous even more detailed critiques) and of his
application to literature. He summarizes for instance Adolf
GrunbaumÂ’s "patient and thorough demolition [1984] of FreudÂ’s
repression theory, showing it to be a tissue of assumptions,
gratuitous extrapolation, begged questions, contrived selections, and
manipulated data" or Ernst GellnerÂ’s 1985 demonstration of the
totalitarian nature of psychoanalysis (remember again what your
professor said), "all power being vested in a self-perpetuating guild
which recognises no other form of authority than that descending,
like some apostolic succession, from Freud himself," or Nobel Prize-
winner Peter MedawarÂ’s comment on looking over the critical
literature on Freud that "the opinion is gaining ground that
doctrinaire psychoanalytic theory is the most stupendous intellectual
confidence trick of the twentieth century: and a terminal product as
well--something akin to a dinosaur or a zeppelin in the history of
ideas, a vast structure of radically unsound design and with no
posterity." Would that Medawar were right about "no posterity," but
alas the dinosaur blimps along. MedawarÂ’s assessment seems close
enough to NabokovÂ’s for one not to need further would-be-ingenious
explanations for NabokovÂ’s opposition and scorn: Nabokov was very
interested in human psychology, and in its relation to family love,
and in the freedom to criticize, and he didnÂ’t like the fraudulence
of Freud being accepted as the unchallengeable modern mode of thought
on these matters.
Vickers, by the way, although his examples are from Shakespearean
studies, takes on other modish muddles of contemporary Theory you are
being exposed to, and shows how for instance in post-Saussurean
French thought (including Foucault, Derrida and Lacan) the rather
minor linguistic ideas of Saussure have been misapplied and
overrated, like FreudÂ’s in psychology, at the expense of many more
recent developments in the same field that are far more rigorous,
probable, fertile and just intellectually alive than what rather
provincial Parisian intellectual fashion has decreed sacred.
From: Brian Boyd
English Department
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019 Auckland New Zealand
Fax (64 9) 373 7429 Tel (64 9) 373 7599 ext 7480
Home fax: (64 9) 620 6520 Home tel: (64 9) 620 6597
e-mail: b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz
A belated reply:
To the student who writes asking about Freud, can I say first that
I think that a professor who says "to disagree with X is to lose the
ability to say anything meaningful at all," whoever X is, is saying
something extremely dangerous for anybody, especially anyone in a
university, to say. He or she is in some very dangerous company. Is
not the right to criticize the first basis for all rational
discussion and all hope of intellectual advance?
Next, I would say that Ben WalshÂ’s pointer to Popper is useful, but
the reference should not be not so much to _The Open Society and Its
Enemies_ as to _Conjectures and Refutations_ (1963), pp. 33-36.
PopperÂ’s essential points are these: 1) that Freudian theory thinks
it can explain any behavior, but something that claims to explain
everything can in fact explain nothing (astronomers donÂ’t predict an
eclipse perhaps will happen at this point and perhaps wonÂ’t happen,
or some combination of the two; biologists donÂ’t say that humans have
two legs, or four, or six, or however many you find: they rule out
certain possibilities): the very confidence of Freudians that they
can explain ANY human behavior is actually their weakest point
(Adler, as Popper, notes, was just as sure that he could explain
every kind of human behavior from his very non-Freudian first
premise); 2) that Freud and Freudians have a very flexible and well-
developed systems for evading criticism, and that anything that rules
itself unavailable for criticism is unscientific and irrational
(Popper defines rationality rather well as the ability to accept
criticism, a definition obviously unknown to your professor).
Then IÂ’d like to add to Brad BuchsbaumÂ’s comment that the professor
canÂ’t be in psychology. Psychology has many many fascinating active
branches (developmental psychology, cognitive psychology,
evolutionary psychology, neuropsychology, psycholinguistics, family
psychology, etc. etc.), in none of which Freud is seen as anything
but primitive. I recommend Brian Vickers, Shakespearean
Appropriations (1993), which has a detailed critique of Freud (and
summary of previous even more detailed critiques) and of his
application to literature. He summarizes for instance Adolf
GrunbaumÂ’s "patient and thorough demolition [1984] of FreudÂ’s
repression theory, showing it to be a tissue of assumptions,
gratuitous extrapolation, begged questions, contrived selections, and
manipulated data" or Ernst GellnerÂ’s 1985 demonstration of the
totalitarian nature of psychoanalysis (remember again what your
professor said), "all power being vested in a self-perpetuating guild
which recognises no other form of authority than that descending,
like some apostolic succession, from Freud himself," or Nobel Prize-
winner Peter MedawarÂ’s comment on looking over the critical
literature on Freud that "the opinion is gaining ground that
doctrinaire psychoanalytic theory is the most stupendous intellectual
confidence trick of the twentieth century: and a terminal product as
well--something akin to a dinosaur or a zeppelin in the history of
ideas, a vast structure of radically unsound design and with no
posterity." Would that Medawar were right about "no posterity," but
alas the dinosaur blimps along. MedawarÂ’s assessment seems close
enough to NabokovÂ’s for one not to need further would-be-ingenious
explanations for NabokovÂ’s opposition and scorn: Nabokov was very
interested in human psychology, and in its relation to family love,
and in the freedom to criticize, and he didnÂ’t like the fraudulence
of Freud being accepted as the unchallengeable modern mode of thought
on these matters.
Vickers, by the way, although his examples are from Shakespearean
studies, takes on other modish muddles of contemporary Theory you are
being exposed to, and shows how for instance in post-Saussurean
French thought (including Foucault, Derrida and Lacan) the rather
minor linguistic ideas of Saussure have been misapplied and
overrated, like FreudÂ’s in psychology, at the expense of many more
recent developments in the same field that are far more rigorous,
probable, fertile and just intellectually alive than what rather
provincial Parisian intellectual fashion has decreed sacred.
From: Brian Boyd
English Department
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019 Auckland New Zealand
Fax (64 9) 373 7429 Tel (64 9) 373 7599 ext 7480
Home fax: (64 9) 620 6520 Home tel: (64 9) 620 6597
e-mail: b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz