Dispatches from the Freud Wars consists of six of John Forrester’s recent essays on Freudian psychoanalysis and its cultural implications, as well as an amusing epilogue in which the ghost of Freud is allowed to comment on current reactions to his thoughts. In the introduction, Forrester states the underlying rationale of the essays: "The more one knows about Freud–the more one has unlearned what one was culturally hard-wired to know about him–the more interesting and surprising and thought-provoking he becomes." Forrester is at his best in the essays that are primarily historical. His discussions of the bizarre love triangle involving Freud’s disciple Sandor Ferenczi; Freud’s penchant for collection (of objets d’art as well as dreams, jokes, and parapraxes); and the historiography of the psychoanalytic movement are lucid, insightful, and eminently worthwhile. His critical essays are not as good. While "Justice, Envy, and Psychoanalysis" interestingly criticizes John Rawls’s arguments against the idea–found in Mandeville, Nietzsche, and Freud–that justice is ultimately based on envy, it is regrettably also somewhat silly on the topic of penis envy. The title essay, moreover, is captious in argument and peevish in tone, as Forrester reacts to the anti-Freudian animadversions of Frederick Crews and Stanley Fish by focusing on rhetorical weaknesses in their arguments rather than on the arguments themselves. Read Dispatches from the Freud Wars for the historical background to the struggle, but not for the latest news from the front.

Glenn Branch received his BA in philosophy from Brandeis University and is presently on leave from the PhD program in philosophy at UCLA. Among his philosophical interests are the philosophy of mind, evolutionary psychology, and the scientific status of psychoanalysis. Amazon.com commissioned this review from Glenn Branch, who is now a regular Metapsychology reviewer.

Categories: Psychoanalysis, Philosophical