NATHAN G. HALE,JR.
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of Johann Weier's sixteenth-century study of witchcraft in which witch–
es' confessions were attributed to their questioners' suggestions.
But recent historical research about Freud is not uniformly hostile.
Sympathetic scholars such as Peter Gay, Hannah Decker, Ilse Grubrich–
Simitis, and Albrecht Hirschmueller have made vital and original
contributions to our knowledge of Freud. But I am highly skeptical about
the global judgments of the most hostile revisionists. There are distortions
of text, omissions of crucial passages, wrong historical judgments, and from
time to time a malicious tone. When I read some of the critics and then
read Freud's case histories, I find myself in an Alice-in-Wonderland world
where the criticism and the text never quite seem to connect. One must
recall that Freud's first patients are long dead, that there are no surviving
case notes, and that we are left with the hearsay recollections of their
descendants. Moreover, in the current preoccupation with Freud's rhetoric,
the logical arguments he advanced are often ignored. Finally, with notable
exceptions, critics concentrate on what Ian Hacking has called the
"Kindergarten Freud," the Freud of the early years when he was feeling his
way and moving from the cathartic method to psychoanalysis.
Let us examine more closely several examples of the work of the new
critics, beginning with the British private scholar, Peter Swales, on Freud's
Katharina, the hysterical girl on the mountaintop whom Freud treated in
a few brief conversations. Swales's sleuthing in identifying Katharina and
her family is wonderful, clearly the result of patience, doggedness, and
sense. But there are serious difficulties with his interpretations of his dis–
covery. Swales makes two major criticisms: that Freud misdiagnosed the
nature of Katharina's problems, and that he suggested much of what she
had to say.
First, the misdiagnosis: Freud believed that her symptoms resulted from
a delayed reaction to wi tnessing her father having sexual intercourse wi th
her cousin. Swales argues that it was an "existential crisis" rather than an
"aversionary reaction." But he never defines the existential crisis. Freud
argued that Katharina's realization that her father had attempted incest
constituted a severe trauma and underlay her hysterical symptoms, a per–
fectly reasonable conclusion of Freud's.
Secondly, just how much suggestion was there on Freud's part? We
have only his case history to go by. Here is what the text says:
Freud: Why were you so frightened when you found them togeth–
er? Did you understand it? Did you know what was going on?
Katharina: Oh, no. I didn't understand anything at the time. I was
only sixteen. I don't know what I was frightened about.
