As a follow-up to my previous post, Paul Ferris in “Dr. Freud: A Life” (1997) says, “Working on this book has taught me the inexhaustible nature of the subject. Freud is what you want him to be.” (p. xxxiii). I had indicated that my investigations of a number of biographies of Freud found that they seemed to vary according to the backgrounds and persuasions of each biographer. I will post on various biographies and biographers. For now keep in mind that my title “Whose Freud?” can also be “Who’s Freud?”.
Another follow-up to my previous post about the harshest Freud critics is a quote from Richard Wollheim in his biography, “Freud” (1991) wherein he comments on what he terms “the denigratory school” of Freud biographers/critics.
” What is distinctive of the denigratory or debunking school is a peculiar amalgam of fulsome praise of Freud and a battery of miscellaneous and uncoordinated criticism, some of it unsupported, some anachronistic, some undoubted well grounded, but much of it aimed at a target that conflates the thought of the man. A prime example is Paul Roazen’s “Freud and His Followers” (1976). (p.xxxiii).