Psychoanalysis
science, literature or art?
pp. 190-196
in: , Style, politics and the future of philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1989Abstract
"Es klingt wie ein wissenschaftliches Märchen," with these words on the evening of April 21, 1896 Count Richard von Krafft-Ebing dismissed Freud's account of the aetiology of hysteria as the result of childhood rape and thereby opened up vehement controversy with respect to Freud's work, which has persisted to this day and shows precious little sign of resolution.1 In the many and varied controversies over psychoanalysis between then and now hardly an aspect of Freud's work has escaped becoming the focus of more bitter conflict. For the most part the reception of psychoanalysis in Austria has been exactly the opposite of its reception in the United States (and, more recently, in France). Austrians have tended to reject it out of hand; whereas Americans have embraced it wholeheartedly and unquestioningly. In both cases the general public's attitude has been less than critical: psychoanalysis has usually been extolled or excoriated almost always for the wrong reasons. In what follows I am less interested in concocting a catalogue of the Austrian friends and foes of Freud's movement than I am with suggesting — there can be no question in such a short piece of establishing — the actual relationship between its scientific promise, its therapeutic performance and its mythopoeic character on the basis of some of his Austrian critics. I shall indicate why I find Arthur Schnitzler's critique of psychoanalyisis especially noteworthy.