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[ Burying Freud Homepage | Freud's Seduction Theory Homepage ] While roaming the net, I stumbled on your web site and an article published in The Lancet by a certain Professor R.C. Tallis entitled, "Burying Freud." I was struck by the title. Must Freud be buried? Like a corpse? I read the article and I am genuinely perplexed. Professor Tallis appears to be a member (if not the spokesman) of a particularly virulent school of Freud detractors. While the style of the Lancet piece is scholarly, with many quotes and countless notes, it is anything but a dispassionate analysis in quest of scientific truth. It is in fact a breathless diatribe. Tallis rants. The tone is angry, reminiscent of Creationists attacking Darwin. It is impossible not to come away with the suspicion that Tallis and those he represents are personally troubled by Freudian theory. It makes them deeply uncomfortable. They wish it would go away. Tallis's vehemence ought to have been accompanied by something positive in replacement. But no fresh ideas are advanced. Tallis offers nothing that amounts to a competing theory of human personality development. And yet, at the same time, he appears to be particularly ill at ease with the Freudian concept of Oedipal conflict in childhood. Lacking fresh ideas of his own, Tallis resorts overwhelmingly to attacks on Freud the man. He was deceitful, manipulative, obsessively ambitious, drug-addicted, driven by messianic fantasies, etc. etc. Even if these and other charges were true, what would that prove? If Einstein were tomorrow revealed to have been a pedophile, should that lead us to doubt, for example, that the speed of light is a constant? Insults are the last resort of sterile scholars. Clearly, these Freud detractors have an agenda fueled by something other than the appeal of open minded scientific inquiry. Do they think it sufficient merely to bury Freud? To be on the safe side, should they not also drive a stake through his heart? What is really going on here? Respectfully,
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[ Burying Freud Homepage | Freud's Seduction Theory Homepage ] While roaming the net, I stumbled on your web site and an article published in The Lancet by a certain Professor R.C. Tallis entitled, "Burying Freud." I was struck by the title. Must Freud be buried? Like a corpse? I read the article and I am genuinely perplexed. Professor Tallis appears to be a member (if not the spokesman) of a particularly virulent school of Freud detractors. While the style of the Lancet piece is scholarly, with many quotes and countless notes, it is anything but a dispassionate analysis in quest of scientific truth. It is in fact a breathless diatribe. Tallis rants. The tone is angry, reminiscent of Creationists attacking Darwin. It is impossible not to come away with the suspicion that Tallis and those he represents are personally troubled by Freudian theory. It makes them deeply uncomfortable. They wish it would go away. Tallis's vehemence ought to have been accompanied by something positive in replacement. But no fresh ideas are advanced. Tallis offers nothing that amounts to a competing theory of human personality development. And yet, at the same time, he appears to be particularly ill at ease with the Freudian concept of Oedipal conflict in childhood. Lacking fresh ideas of his own, Tallis resorts overwhelmingly to attacks on Freud the man. He was deceitful, manipulative, obsessively ambitious, drug-addicted, driven by messianic fantasies, etc. etc. Even if these and other charges were true, what would that prove? If Einstein were tomorrow revealed to have been a pedophile, should that lead us to doubt, for example, that the speed of light is a constant? Insults are the last resort of sterile scholars. Clearly, these Freud detractors have an agenda fueled by something other than the appeal of open minded scientific inquiry. Do they think it sufficient merely to bury Freud? To be on the safe side, should they not also drive a stake through his heart? What is really going on here? Respectfully,
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