J.P.Roos: Borch Jacobsen on Freud

(comment on LRB April 2000 issue's article on Israel's book on Freud)

Mikkel Borch Jacobsen’s piece on Freud was fascinating reading and very astonishing given his earlier article on Ian Hacking and its indulgent tone concerning the reality of mental disease. It was almost like day and night - until the last paragraphs in which he turned everything upside down. Yes, Freud made it all up, yes, he engaged in large scale fraud and falsification of his results but this is not relevant to his historical importance because everything in society is an artefact anyway, a social construct. The only problem is that the psychoanalysis tries to cover it all up and does not simply admit the fact (of course, B-J does not use the word fact here because there are no facts).
Once more, my simple question is: why should it be impossible to make a distinction between fraud, falsification and social facts, i.e. states of affairs where it can be sufficiently reliably be ascertained that a certain event has taken place and that it has had certain consequences? Of course there is a grey area between these categories, but it is not so great as to make distinctions impossible. And in the case of Freud the problem seems to be that his lying and fabrications were so monumental and obvious that he must have been aware, not only of lying but also of being necessarily caught.
For Borch Jacobsen, the explanation is that Freud developed his theories without any heed to empirical evidence and then made his patients believe in the theories, thus creating psychoanalysis. The patients’ cooperation was crucial. Still the question is: is it the same thing if a patient believes in a patently useless cure and becomes cured, of if he cooperates in an effective cure and becomes cured partly as a consequence of his belief in the efficacy of the cure? I.e. are quackery and real medicine the same thing if patients believe in it? Let us remember also that the famous cocaine patient of Freud’s, Fleischl-Marxow had very real pains which he tried to treat, with very unfortunate results. Nowadays he would probably have been cured relatively easily (from the original pains), with or without his “co-construction”.
When does this stupid “in society there are no facts”- fashion stop? Get real, Mikkel!

J.P.Roos
University of Helsinki

Takaisin alkuun