NATHAN G. HALE,JR.
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that his cases had been scanty and yet he had generalized with apparent
confidence on their basis. This tendency to over-generalization seems to be
a persistent characteristic, as Russell
A.
Powell and Douglas
P.
Boer, and
Racle
P.
Blass and Bennett Simon maintain. In 1905 Freud clearly cor–
rected his earlier view: early sexual experience such as seduction was not
per se
responsible for neuroses, but rather they were the reaction to that
experience. But he never entirely abandoned the etiological significance of
seduction and early trauma and reiterated their importance toward the end
of his life in
Moses and Monotheism,
although the Oedipus complex and
stages of psychosexual development became far more important.
What can we conclude about Freud's first accounts of his patients?
What is reasonable? I think we can conclude as he did that he ran across a
larger-than-usual number of cases in which there had been abuse in child–
hood-at what precise age is unclear-and that some of these patients
produced what seemed to be veridical memories of such abuse in their
very early years. Let me add parenthetically that Freud assumed the period
of childhood was important, an argument his critics seem to have missed.
He outlined the following reasons, perhaps derived from contemporary
biology: "Injuries sustained by an organ which is as yet immature or by a
function which is in process of developing, often cause more severe and
lasting effects than they could do in more mature years." The argument
that not just heredity but also environmental traumata are the major caus–
es of neurosis is part of Freud's developing idea, which is shared by various
contemporary researchers.
To regard Freud's case histories as uniform failures is misleading. The
Wolf Man, for instance, whose truly florid symptoms and profound neuroti–
cism had been treated unsuccessfully by some of Freud's most prestigious
contemporaries, temporarily was cured of his constipation, which later
returned. Also, most critics overlook that, as a refugee from the Russian
Revolution after the Great War, he found himself penniless and without skills
in
a foreign country. Earlier, after his treatment with Freud, he had earned a
law degree, married, and later worked in an insurance office in Vienna for
thirty years. He did undergo periods of treatment with other analysts. But
could his later level of functioning have been predicted of the spoiled, neu–
rotic invalid who first came to Freud, an invalid with a retinue who, if
psychoanalytic accounts are to be credited, could not even dress himself? The
Rat Man, the subject of Freud's other extensive case history, enjoyed a remis–
sion of symptoms as a result of his treatment until his death in World War
1.
To regard all Freud's claims and changes of view as proof of chicanery
and dishonesty rather than enthusiasm, lack of caution, ambition, possibly
overweening, and an honest search for explanation seems to me to be proof
of the biased intent of the cri tic.
