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whole. Freud was a consummate writer who polished his work through
many drafts and destroyed his case notes except those for the Rat Man
case. But these characteristics hardly demonstrate an aptitude for chi–
canery. Was he a poor theorist? In many ways he was a brilliant
theoretician; indeed his theoretical leads have created further explorations
of the major themes he pioneered: the personal meaning of dreams and
symptoms, the role of early family relationships in later behavior, and the
importance of unconscious processes and of sexuality. As John Burnham
has suggested, Freud's was the only instinct theory to survive the stringent
criticism of the 1920s. Was he a consistent theorist? No, as a number of
psychoanalysts themselves have argued. Indeed, he never claimed to have
created a final and unchangeable theoretical structure. Did he establish a
cult? I think not, as the analysts' extensive revisions of his conclusions
clearly demonstrate.
Finally, we need to ask why intemperate Freud-bashing has become
modish. Some of the reasons are obvious and derive from the nature of the
psychoanalytic movement itself: the overly optimistic claims of the
Freudians in the years of their dominance; their occasional arrogance and
attempts at universal and reductive explanations of complex social, politi–
cal, and personal phenomena; the failures of psychoanalysis to achieve
replicable findings and some of its therapeutic goals. But beyond those
internal shortcomings lie broader cultural shifts: the vogue of anti-heroics,
indeed, the concentration on faults and foibles in the treatment of histor–
ical figures; the erosion of privacy; and finally the decline of truly rational
debate and fairness in the public discussion of controversial issues.
