George Prochnik’s New York Times Book Review of Frederick Crews’ “Freud: The Making of an Illusion” perpetuates myth of Freud and the unconscious.

Conundrum

“Yet, confoundingly, Freud ‘is destined to remain among us as the most influential of 20th-century sages,’ Crews writes, claiming that the attention bestowed on him by contemporary scholars and commentators ranks with that accorded Shakespeare and Jesus. Here is a fascinating conundrum: The creator of a scientifically delegitimized blueprint of the human mind and of a largely discontinued psychotherapeutic discipline retains the cultural capital of history’s greatest playwright and the erstwhile Son of God” (1).

Solution

Freud retains his “cultural capital,” because The New York Times, George Prochnik, and many other writers perpetuate the myth that Freud discovered the unconscious.

The book review’s paragraph on Freud’s allegedly enduring contributions begins with “The idea that large parts of our mental life remain obscure or even entirely mysterious to us” (1); that is, the unconscious.

I easily debunked that myth in my March 31, 2017 post, “The Unconscious: First, Freud did not discover it (it was already well known); Second, it’s a misnomer, since it refers to conscious, alternate personalities.” I simply quoted from Wikipedia’s historical review, which shows widespread appreciation of the unconscious before Freud came along (2).

In short, the main reason that Freud continues to have “cultural capital” is that publications like The New York Times continue to credit him with discovering the unconscious. He did not.

Moreover, as I argued in my March 31, 2017 post, “the unconscious” may be a misnomer for dissociated, multiple consciousness.

1. George Prochnik. “The Curious Conundrum of Freud’s Persistent Influence” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/books/review/freud-biography-frederick-crews.html?mcubz=0

2. Wikipedia. “Unconscious Mind.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind