Freud May Be Flawed but He Deserves Respect

Re “Psychoanalysis Is Dead ... So How Does That Make You Feel?” Commentary, Feb. 18: Todd Dufresne seems to be reveling in the death of psychoanalysis and in the falsity of virtually everything Sigmund Freud had to say. He implies that the 20th century belonged to psychoanalysis. Behaviorists and neuroscientists, who have their own true believers, would grant it the first half. But in the last few decades, unprovable and useless ideas from anywhere have been dropping by the wayside slowly but surely.

Freud’s theories try to explain more of human experience than those of probably anyone else in history -- an egotistical and presumptuous enterprise, to be sure. Most of them can’t be proven, which doesn’t make them untrue. People who accept his writings on faith alone cannot expect the rest of us to do so.

Somewhere between scientific proof and common sense are concepts that are valuable in understanding how and why we think, feel and act in the ways we do. The unconscious, for example, hasn’t been found on a CAT scan or measured on a test. But Freud’s description of it later led directly to the development of cognitive therapy, a technique with documented and measurable results.

Richard Moldawsky MD

Anaheim

*

As a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, I see Freud as a brave, if flawed, observer and theorizer. However, his legacy is flourishing in ways that combine, for instance, behavioral observations about infant/parent attachment phenomena with the advances in the neurosciences. There is no other psychology that so comprehensively seeks to understand how internal states (mental representations and brain structure) both shape and are shaped by our early attachments and the relationships that ensue.

Loren Woodson MD

Santa Monica

*

The news about the death of Freud has been greatly exaggerated. No doubt, the cult of psychoanalysis has diminished, but the greatness of Freud’s achievement lives on. As long as people are agonized by anxiety and repression, and as long as society suffers from pathology and discontent, we will honor Freud. Glib dismissal of his contribution says more about the critic than about Freud. No doubt, Dufresne has an Oedipal complex and is just trying to kill off the father he secretly admires.

Robert E. Doud

Glendale