The Assault on Freud

(7 of 7)

That, finally, may be the central problem with declaring Freud finished. For all of his log rolling and influence peddling, his running roughshod over colleagues and patients alike, for all the sins of omission and commission that critics past and present correctly lay on his couch, he still managed to create an intellectual edifice that feels closer to the experience of living, and therefore hurting, than any other system currently in play. What he bequeathed was not (despite his arguments to the contrary), nor has yet proved itself to be, a science. Psychoanalysis and all its offshoots may in the final analysis turn out to be no more reliable than phrenology or mesmerism or any of the countless other pseudosciences that once offered unsubstantiated answers or false solace. Still, the reassurances provided by Freud that our inner lives are rich with drama and hidden meanings would be missed if it disappeared, leaving nothing in its place.

Shortly after Freud actually died in 1939, W.H. Auden, one of the many 20th century writers who mined psychoanalysis for its ample supply of symbols and imagery, wrote an elegy that concluded:

. . . sad is Eros, builder of cities,

and weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

Auden's choice of figures from Greek mythology was intentional and appropriate. Perhaps Homer and Sophocles and the rest will prove, when all is said and done, better guides to the human condition than Freud. But he did not shy away from such competition.