Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience - Softcover

Cioffi, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081269385X ISBN 13: 9780812693850

Publisher: Open Court, 1999

Synopsis

For three decades Frank Cioffi has been at the center of the debate over Freud's legacy and the legitimacy of psychoanalysis. Cioffi has given startling demonstrations that, in one area after another, Freud's accounts of the development of his theories are untruthful. But Cioffi's even more impressive achievement has been to scrupulously distinguish the many different, often equivocal, assertions made by psychoanalysis, thus laying bare the mechanism of its rhetorical conjuring tricks.

About this title

Synopsis:

In the early 1970s, Cioffi demonstrated that Freud falsified the account of his discovery of the Oedipus complex - an account that had gone unquestioned until that time. Moreover, Cioffi showed that this misrepresentation was necessary to the propagation of the Oedipus theory. The author subsequently revealed Freud's falsifications in retracting his theory of infantile seduction, a revelation that has been often cited in recent books and scholarly journals. As a result, the scientific legitimacy of psychoanalysis has been highly contested in recent years - with a growing wave of critics insisting that psychoanalytic research must meet adequate standards of cogency and candour if psychoanalysis is to claim to be more than a pseudoscience. In "Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience", Cioffi presents nine essays that highlight the ongoing controversy and add insight into current debates.

About this edition

• Publisher: Open Court
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 081269385X
• ISBN 13: 9780812693850
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 275