Freud: A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Storr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Where Freud was wrong was in making psychosexual development so central that all other forms of social and emotional development were conceived as being derived from it."

Amen. However, in my view, this is not said strongly enough. But first a disclaimer: In all my 800+ reviews so far on Goodreads I have tried to be as objective and unbiased as I could. I am giving myself a dispensation for this review. It has now been over 50 years since I first read Freud's writings and read about Freud and for all these 50 years I have considered Freud's theories complete nonsense, rubbish, gibberish, and even - in Joe Biden's language - malarkey! To me Freud has always meant Fraud, pseudoscientific fraud.

I reached for this book with curiosity and trepidation: if the author demonstrates that my half-a-century-old perceptions are only biases, will I be able to admit the error of my ways? Luckily, Dr. Anthony Storr, the author of Freud. A Very Short Introduction (1989), quite convincingly demonstrates the major faults and inadequacies of Freud's theory. I do not need to fight my anti-freud bias. I am still allowed to laugh out loud at various idiocies spouted by Freud, such as:

"Freud believed that sublimation of unsatisfied libido was responsible for producing all art and literature."

Dr. Storr quotes numerous sources to identify the potential roots of Freud's misconceptions, such as his "obsessional" (is it the same as "obsessive"?) personality, his tendency to excessive generalization, his lack of experience with severely mentally ill patients. The author also mentions that

"Freud remained a determinist throughout his life, believing that all vital phenomena, including psychological phenomena like thoughts, feelings, and phantasies, are rigidly determined by the principles of cause and effect."

To me, a dilettante in psychology but a self-avowed probabilist, the strict determinism and overgeneralization are the main reasons for Freud's delusions. I believe that randomness (that manifests itself, for instance, through the context of everything we do) and individual differences between people play crucial role in determining human behavior.

But I, to repeat, an amateur psychologist, also see the third reason of Freud's fallacies: he projected his own sexual hang-ups onto all humans. He built one of the most enduring theories in the history of psychology on his own uneasiness with and awkwardness about all things sexual.

But back to the subject - the book. I very much like how the author succinctly summarizes the major areas of Freud's theoretical work. In Chapters 3 through 6 we read about the phases of infantile sexual development (the oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages - I will refrain from snide remarks), the Oedipus complex. Then free association, interpretation of dreams, and transference. Next comes the structure of the human mental apparatus: ego, id, and super-ego. The human psychological conditions such as aggression, melancholia, depression, and paranoia. The next three chapters are about the psycho-pathology of everyday life, art and literature, and culture and religion. The final three chapters focus on Freud as a therapist and the method of psycho-analysis to which he contributed the most, the state of psycho-analysis today, and its appeal. The author writes:

[...] the general way in which psycho-analysis and other forms of psychotherapy are conducted is still based on Freud's procedure [...]"

Dr. Storr also emphasizes that Freud's most important legacy might be that he taught modern psychotherapists how to listen.

In a rather damning critique Dr. Storr writes

"My own view is that Freud was far more interested in ideas than he was in patients. [...] What was important [to him] was that the cases selected should support his theories about human nature."

What I miss is a diagnosis why Freud's theories gathered such extreme following. Why millions and millions of people bought the bunkum about infantile sexual development being the root of all their problems. Well, I have two answers. First, sex titillates and sex sells. My other answer is even more cynical: Freud's theory gives people a convenient culprit, a reason for their inadequacies, fears, complexes, problems - things that happened to them in their infancy.

A very good, concise, and blessedly critical introduction to the work of Sigmund Freud.

Four stars.

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