I came across Frederick Crews’s book Follies of the Wise from a review from Skeptic Magazine. The review intrigued me and not knowing much about Crews nor his reputation among the pro-Freud and pro-psychoanalysis crowd I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.
I’m glad I did.
Follies is a collection of some of Crews’s work on Freud, repressed memories, UFOs, creationism, theosophy, and in one section literary theory that was first published in the The New York Review of Books. This collection also contains two interviews with Crews.
The bulk of the book takes on Freud and psychoanalysis and Crews does an excellent job of exposing Freud as not the genius most pop-psychologists and devotees of Freud make him out to be. Crews eviscerates Freud, his methodology and his outright falsifications of data, Freud’s tendency to neglect to even offer data to support his ideas, and the complete counter-intuitiveness of repressed memories. Part I and Part II are all about Freud and repressed memories. Crews offers ample evidence to back up his thesis in each essay to the consternation of many supporters of Freud and his methods. To the point that if you google Freud+Basher, Crews name will come up as the primary results. However, Crews doesn’t bash Freud. He takes on Freud’s ideas, his methods and his outcomes. He offers a keen skeptical eye at the conclusions Freud offered.
With repressed memories, Crews takes on the false hypothesis that many people have repressed traumatic experiences and only trained psychoanalysts can get to these so called repressed memories. Crews exposes the damage that many implanted memories, both purposefully implanted or by accident, can befall innocent people. He discusses how our minds can be fooled and how easy it is for someone to even remember false memories and even in the light of all the evidence that those memories are false, cling to them as if they were real.
Crews asks if incredible tragedy befalls a person at any age, even a young age, to the point that the mind represses that memory and only psychoanalysis can extract that repressed memory then how does one explain that the memories of Holocaust survivors seems intact as do survivors of many tragedies ranging from sexual abuse to being tortured.
Crews also applies this to literary criticism as well.
This is because literary academe represents a protected preserve where
ideas that have been hunted to the brink of extinction in other
academic fields (just to name a few, Freudian and Lacanian
psychoanalysis, classical Marxism, blank slate models of human nature)
can survive a while longer, shielded from the spears of skeptical
hunters.1
This book is essentially dissenting essays. It says so in the subtitle. He takes a look at a variety of subjects from the point of view of a skeptic and examines each in detail putting together a coherent argument for or against his subject supported with plenty of evidence and succinctly and clearly written. All of his thesis are well defended.
He takes a new look at Kafka and brings interesting insights into this staple of first year English composition college courses. He implies that Kafka isn’t this great novelist that most critics thrust upon him by literary theorists using poor analytical devices. It offered fresh insight to Kafka’s work.
Crews offers a counter to the post structuralism school of literary thought in an essay that, at times, made me read passages twice, and consult the almighty Google, to understand his concepts.
Overall this is a strong collection of essays.
Trackbacks /
Pingbacks