Freud's Answer: The Social Origins of Our Psychoanalytic Century

If, as is increasingly clear, Freudian psychoanalysis is neither scientifically respectable nor therapeutically efficacious, what exactly was Freud up to? Martin Wain's reply, in Freud's Answer, is that psychoanalysis is essentially a defense of modern liberal democracy in disguise, "a symbolical, deflective tale about the mysterious workings of the mind (which was really the quite puzzling and often irrational social order), told with a seeming reason and logic that many found believable." In its topics, its methods, and its goals, psychoanalysis was designed--in part adventitiously, in part deliberately--to suppress, divert attention from, or assuage the effects of the tensions intrinsic to modernity. Although Wain's purpose is not to attack psychoanalysis, he nevertheless expresses his views that it is sophistic and that its practitioners are guilty of deceit. While he concedes that the deception was perhaps necessary for the survival of modern liberal democracy, his views are sure to be unwelcome to committed Freudian believers.

The thesis of Freud's Answer is thus similar to those found in Ernest Gellner's The Psychoanalytic Movement, William J. McGrath's Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis, and Carl E. Schorske's Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. Wain's canvas is larger, however, so he paints with broader strokes--for example, in the first two chapters, he briskly sketches the social history of Europe from the fall of Rome to 1850. The pace slows as he approaches the task of deciphering the hidden agenda of psychoanalysis, but his writing remains lively. Freud's Answer is certain to provoke controversy; it is equally certain that it will have to be reckoned with. --Glenn Branch