On Freud 2

Responding to my post On Freud, Recusant draws my attention to this by Mick Hartley. I'll leave aside the ad hominem stuff and this silliness, 'It's a piece of chutzpah worthy of the man himself to now proclaim him as our only bulwark against the rising tide of fundamentalism and totalitarianism'. 'Only bulwark'? Nobody, as far as I know, has ever said anything like that. No, the heart of the matter is that Hartley's view is that Freud is 'wrong' and psychoanalysis, like phlogiston, should be consigned to the dustbin of history and bad science. This is, I suspect, the current majority view, but I still find it startling. Personally, I never once believed that Freud was 'right' in Hartley's terms. Yet I never doubted his importance and, indeed, greatness. I don't see any contradiction in this. Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Newton and Kant might all be said to be 'wrong', but blithely to deny their importance for that reason would be madness. Right or wrong, they define certain ways of thinking, certain moments. Indeed, Marx - evoked by Hartley - was plainly very 'wrong', but his analysis of capitalism in the face of nineteenth century industrialisation endures. The moment, the way of thinking, of Freud was post-Darwinian. He was attempting to describe the relationship between society, civilisation and our animal natures. He did so with an astounding grandeur and percipience. The depth and scope of his thought are breathtaking. But he was not, as he believed, Copernicus or Darwin. They produced single insights - heliocentrism and evolution through natural selection - to which their names will always be attached. Freud produced no such insight. Rather, he defined our predicament. He may have used terms that now seem exotic, quaint or just crazy, but so did Plato and Aquinas. The idea that he can be dismissed just because he was 'wrong' is a product of contemporary literalism and the inability to step out of the simple-minded world of opinion and scientific efficacy. Bind your imagination with those ropes, Mick, and, trust me, you'll miss everything worth knowing