Freud: The Making of An Illusion

Review Intensively researched and readable book ... with fastidious and forensic care, Crews assembles his material into a 762-page charge sheet of lies, hypocrisy, falsified evidence, sexual creepery, 'intellectual parasitism', corruption, cruelty, botched physical and mental treatments, money-grabbing, 'thick-headedness', bad science, wild, evidence-free speculation and autobiography shiftily disguised as clinical evidence. -- Bryan Appleyard ― Sunday TimesElegantly written ... a punchy addition to the ongoing argument over [Freud's] significance -- Jenny McCartney ― Mail on Sunday Published On: 2017-09-17A stylish and biting study of scientific mendacity -- Antonio Melechi ― TLS Published On: 2017-10-06'Anyone who enjoys reading the systematic dismantling of a reputation will relish this riveting expose ... highly convincing ... This devastating book might kick-start the long awaited process of his downfall from grace. ― Daily MailAn elegant and relentless exposé ... Crews comes to bury Freud, not to praise him, and he does so convincingly. Impressively well-researched, powerfully written, and definitively damning. ― Kirkus ReviewsThis riveting and masterful reassessment puts the final nail in the coffin of Sigmund Freud's misguided career by meticulously documenting his willful descent into pseudoscience. Altogether a fascinating read! -- Frank J. Sulloway, author of Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic LegendInvestigating the famed investigator of the human mind, Frederick Crews reveals Freud as a self-aggrandizing charlatan who cured no one and lacked the most elementary insight into human beings. The Freudian myth - one of the thought-deforming tyrannies of the 20th century - is hereby at an end. This book is as exhilarating as the fall of the Berlin Wall. -- Stewart Justman, author of The Psychological MystiqueFor those who worship Freud, and even those millions who have simply admired his ideas, Crews's rigorous and captivating detective work will be a bracing challenge. -- Elizabeth Loftus, co-author of The Myth of Repressed MemoryFrederick Crews has written a riveting, masterful biography of Freud that demolishes forever the myth of the brilliant, heroic conquistador of the human mind. Delving deeply into hitherto suppressed archival material, Crews paints an unforgettable portrait of an utterly incompetent psychotherapist whose ruthless pursuit of wealth and fame led him to disregard the welfare of his patients as well as the scruples of scientific method -- Richard J. McNally, author of What Is Mental Illness?In Freud: The Making of an Illusion, Frederick Crews tells the riveting story of how a troubled, insecure, but supremely ambitious doctor stumbled from one therapeutic fantasy to another before hitting on the one that made him famous. Crews is a master narrator, and he has put his finger on the key factor in Freud's career: the remarkable series of intense, morally fraught, and truly bizarre relationships (collegial, therapeutic, and sexual) that kept Freud going as his theories proved ever resistant to confirmation -- John Farrell, author of Freud's Paranoid QuestOne has to admire Crews's story: the way he tells it, and the marvelous blending of the different sources -- Malcolm Macmillan, author of Freud Evaluated: The Completed ArcA tremendously important book. -- Paul McHugh, author ― Try to Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash over Meaning, Memory, and Mind Product Description From the master of Freud debunkers, the book that definitively puts an end to the myth of psychoanalysis and its creator.Sigmund Freud is one of the most influential figures of western society. His ideas transformed the way that we think about our minds, our selves and even our thoughts. But while he was undeniably a visionary thinker, Freud's legend was also the work of years of careful mythologizing, and a fierce refusal to accept criticism or scrutiny of his often unprincipled methods. In Freud: The Maki