How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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270 (canvas 290)
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perverse sexuality, death-drive, narcissism, osdipus com¬
plex, feelings of guilt, and the like.
Although Freud claims that his is a scientific method,
that is, a mechanistic cause and effect method, comparable
to that used in the physical sciences, no one has ever seen
or demonstrated a libido, nor has anyone ever discovered
or charted the limits of the unconscious, the fore¬
conscious, or the subconscious. Freudian psychoanalysis
has degenerated into a system of demonology. Any
objections to the Freudian method made by other serious
investigators are promptly anathematized by Freud and
his school. If you accept the teachings of Freud as gospel
—and it is a very contradictory gospel—you understand
them and are accepted into the orthodox fold. If you
criticize, or if you refuse to accept the gospel, or point
out its inconsistencies, you are told that your criticism is
“ unconscious resistance ”.
This device of excluding all objective evaluations of the
theory and practice of psychoanalysis on the grounds of
heterodoxy, leaves the structure of Freudian psycho¬
analysis intact against scientific assaults on its infallibility.
But psychoanalysis forfeits its right to consideration as a
science because by this same device it becomes a religion
and a cult. What will happen to the cult when the high
priest is dead, only the brave may conjecture. Even
to-day no two Freudians can agree in their interpreta¬
tions, but all unite in savage denunciation of the contribu¬
tions of non-Freudian workers in the field.
Adler and the Hormic Point of View
Despite his mistakes, his obstinacy, his high-handed¬
ness, and his inability to accept criticism, Freud must be
heralded as a great pioneer of the science of mental health,
and a courageous explorer of the unknown mysteries of
the human soul. But it has remained for his unorthodox
co-worker, Alfred Adler, also a Viennese psychiatrist, to
give us a working understanding of the neuroses, and a
key to their meaning. Alfred Adler has called his science