The Freud Encyclopedia is a
physically large book with 641 pages.  I have had it on my bookshelf for the
past year, planning to use it as the need arose.  However, in that time, I
never had occasion to use it, and that is indicative of the state of
psychoanalysis today.  It is a collection of theories and practices that are
increasingly irrelevant to not just ordinary life but most forms of academic
inquiry.  Those who are scholars of psychoanalysis will already be familiar
with most of the information the book contains.  So it is far from clear who
might need The Freud Encyclopedia.  It will probably be most useful as a
reference work available in college and public libraries — maybe graduate
students in psychology, literature, cultural studies and philosophy will find
it a helpful resource when working on some papers. 

Nevertheless, The Freud
Encyclopedia displays excellent work by its editor, Edwin Erwin, professor
of philosophy at the University of Miami at Coral Gables.  Erwin has collected
some of the most outstanding scholars in the field.  The notable entries in
this work include:

·       
Morris Eagle on Repression

·       
Edward Erwin on a wide range of topics, including Experimental
Evidence; Free Will; Meaning and Psychoanalysis; Mind and Body; Pseudoscience
and Psychoanalysis.

·       
Seymour Fisher and Roger Greenberg on Scientific Tests of Freud’s
Theories and Therapy

·       
Clark Glymour on Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

·       
Adolf Grunbaum on Critique of Psychoanalysis

·       
Robert Holt on Metapsychology

·       
Judith Kegan Gardiner on Feminism and Psychoanalysis

·       
Patricia Kitcher on Cognitive Psychology and Psychoanalysis

·       
Donald Spence on Interpretation

Some entries are so short they are more like extended
glossary explanations.  There are some well-known authors whose entries are
very short or whose entries are not on topics on for which they are known as
experts, which seems like a mis-use of resources.  These include:

·       
Ilham Dilman on Infantile Sexuality

·       
Jerome Neu on Perversions

·       
Melvin Sabshin on Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis

·       
Louis Sass on Modernism, Postmodernism, and Freudianism

Some of the historical entries are particularly
interesting.  Malcolm Macmillan’s article on Pierre Janet is very welcome,
since this is part of psychoanalytic history that deserves greater attention. 
Marcel Zentner does an excellent job in setting out Nineteenth-Century
Precursor’s of Freud.  Allen Esterson’s piece on Freud’s abandonment of the
Seduction Theory presents an important reevaluation of the standard history. 
The encyclopedia is not exhaustive and it is patchy when it comes to
post-Freudian theory.  There is comparatively little on the work of Heinz Kohut
or Roy Schafer, for instance.  There are some small problems with links to
entries too.  For example, if one looks under K for Kohut, one finds "Kohut’s
Psychology of Narcissism: See Narcissism" but in fact Burness Moore’s
article only has half a page on Kohut.  One needs to go to the useful index to
find other articles discussing Kohut, and one can discover that Ernest Wolf’s
article on "Self Psychology" in fact has more substantial discussion
of Kohut.

Given the current crisis of psychoanalysis, the
central issue behind a project such as this encyclopedia is why anyone should
take the theory or form of psychotherapy seriously.  These days, with managed
care controlling most talk therapy, very few can afford to engage in
traditional psychoanalysis meeting four or fives times a week with an analyst. 
Furthermore, there seems to be no good evidence that such therapy is any more
helpful than far more minimal forms of talk therapy.  Many of the empirical
claims of psychoanalytic theory have not been confirmed and some, especially
concerning psychosexual development, are highly implausible.  Other parts of
psychoanalytic theory seem to defy any empirical testing, and thus are open to
a change of being unscientific.  Even in the history of ideas, Freud’s
importance is under attack, and that of post-Freudians is especially in doubt. 
Adrian Johnston makes a surprising claim in his article on Lacan, that the
French psychoanalyst is a thinker "no one interested in the history of
ideas in the twentieth century can avoid."  Clark Glymour’s assessment
seems more accurate when he points out that "major philosophical work in
the twentieth century has little traceable debt to psychoanalysis or to
Freud." 

As one would expect, Adolf Grunbaum has a negative
assessment of psychoanalytic explanation, building on his considerable body of
work in which he has previously set out his critique.  Erwin presents a more
positive account of the evidential status of psychoanalysis, balancing
different views on both sides, and also pointing out that the problems facing
psychoanalysis also concern many other cognitive and behavioral theories. 
Fisher and Greenberg argue that the scientific evidence shows that Freud was
right about some things and wrong about others.  Robert Holt recognizes that
both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice are deeply flawed, but he
suggests that progress has been made on reformulating and systematizing the
clinical theory.  As editor, Erwin has done a good job at collecting a balanced
range of views of psychoanalysis, and among them are some plausible arguments
defending Freudian approaches. 

Overall then, The Freud Encyclopedia serves
as an excellent resource for those interested in learning about the scientific
and cultural status of psychoanalysis.  It provides a sampling of some of the
best recent scholarship in the area, and it has been edited with great
intelligence.  With its frank admission of the epistemic problems facing the
theory, it brings credibility to its otherwise sympathetic attitude toward
psychoanalysis.  It remains hard to be see how psychoanalysis can survive as an
independent tradition, but this work does help one envisage how Freud could
still provide inspiration in the formulation of new interdisciplinary work on
the emotions and developmental theory.  

 

© 2003 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved.

 

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also
editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Psychoanalysis