Freud Was a Fraud: A Triumph of Pseudoscience

Amen to that, @Cheshire. And as @TiredSam will attest, Freud's still alive and strong in some corners of the world...

 

In related weirdness, Freud's nephew (twice), Edward Bernays, was literally the father of propaganda, a totally amoral manipulator who despised the public he was payed to dupe using, among other things, psychological warfare.

 

Sigmund Freud’s Cocaine Problem

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/22/sigmund-freuds-cocaine-problem/


“Editor's note: Nearly 130 years ago, cocaine was the world’s newest wonder drug -touted as a cure for everything from morphine addiction to tuberculosis. And its biggest supporter was Sigmund Freud. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has the fascinating history and what it means for us today on "Sanjay Gupta M.D." at 7:30 a.m. ET Saturday and Sunday.

Whenever Big Pharma unfurls its latest “blockbuster” drug, I am carried back to the era when the biggest wonder drug on the market was cocaine. Yes, cocaine!

In the early 1880s, pharmaceutical houses touted it as a cure for everything from morphine addiction and depression to dyspepsia and fatigue. It was widely available in tonics, powders, wines and soft drinks before its mass consumption created a cadre of raging addicts demanding medical attention.

One of cocaine’s leading medical advocates was a struggling Viennese neurologist named Sigmund Freud. He began studying cocaine’s effects in 1884, and his clinical notebooks amply demonstrate that his favorite experimental subject was himself.

The evolution of the once 'wonder drug'

Initially, Sigmund was eager to employ cocaine as an antidote for his best friend’s morphine addiction. Ernst Fleischl-Marxow was a brilliant physiologist who injured his thumb while dissecting a cadaver, resulting in chronic pain tamed only by large doses of morphine.

Substituting one addictive drug for another was a common means of treating substance abuse in the late 19th century. What all these well-intentioned games of medical musical chairs did most reliably was to create “new and improved” addicts.

Freud, in essence, transformed his highly functioning, albeit opiate-dependent, friend into an addled cocaine and morphine addict who was dead seven years later at age 45.

One would think that this episode would have soured Freud on the drug. Yet like most humans ensnared by cocaine’s addictive grip, for the next 12 years, he continued to sing its praises and consumed a great deal of cocaine to quell his physical aches and mental anxieties. In a perverse way, Freud loved how cocaine made him talk endlessly about memories and experiences he previously thought were locked in his brain for no one to hear, let alone judge.

Freud’s most haunting encounter with the drug occurred in 1895 after he and a colleague named Wilhelm Fleiss nearly killed a patient named Emma Eckstein with a botched operation and too much cocaine. Several nights later, he had a disturbing dream about a party where Eckstein blamed Freud for his gross negligence.

Today, Eckstein is better known as “Irma," the pseudonym Freud gave her in his masterpiece, "The Interpretation of Dreams." When writing about his dream, Freud glossed over his obvious malpractice, an act that today would have resulted in disgrace, loss of medical license, lawsuits and even jail time.

Instead, Freud explained the dream meant he was a caring doctor who was, if anything, overly concerned about his patient, “Irma."

Like so many others, Freud suffered from the most maddening symptom of addiction: the stealthy process by which the addict’s mind conspires to convince that nothing, nothing at all, is askew or dangerous about something that most decidedly is.

Indeed, if one set out to design addiction as an implacable disease, he would be hard pressed to come up with a more diabolical symptom than denial, the need to lead a double life - feeding the addiction in private while struggling to starve, or at least conceal, it in public for long periods of time.

Until, that is, the addiction completely takes over with disastrous results and public masquerade is no longer possible.

One assumes that his clinical experiences with Eckstein, if not Fleischl-Marxow, taught him that cocaine was far too dangerous for any therapeutic application. In the fall of 1896, the day after his father’s funeral, Freud claimed to have put his “cocaine brush” aside. No documentary evidence exists to refute his testimony.

But for the remaining days of his life, Freud had far greater difficulty in fully comprehending the dangerous consequences of his substance abuse. He decidedly, and repeatedly, misinterpreted his famous dream of cocaine. Instead, he chose to elaborate a far more flattering and positive analysis that epitomizes an addiction’s power of subterfuge.

The man who invented psychoanalysis, a revolutionary pursuit for self-truth, succumbed to the same “big lie” most every practicing addict tells himself every day.”

 

Wasn't cocaine an ingredient in the original coca-cola - hence the name? Or am I misremembering?

 

Yes! Hence the line (no pun intended), “It’s the Real Thing.”

“Coca leaf extract had been used in Coca-Cola products since 1885, with cocaine being completely eliminated from the products in or around 1903.[5]”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca

 

Looking at @Chesire's original article, I noticed this:

I wonder if we really know that for sure - that CBT works. Given the poor designs used to assess its efficacy, I would say we just don't know yet.

This made me think on it all, progress and science and everything. We humans can easily detect the BS of past eras, but we remain oblivious to our own current BS. Each generation convinced that they finally have the truth nailed.

 

I noticed that little tidbit, too, @Woolie. The irony!
The power of propaganda--it ain't for sissies!

 

This is an interesting line, which sounds oddly familiar:

Remind anyone of the concept of "functional overlay"?

 

I think it’s fair to assume that some types of CBT may be helpful for some people at certain periods in their lives. But I don’t feel there is enough body of evidence to support casting a wider net. I think many interventions can be used to help manage stress and depression. But I feel we need to bring the right tool for the job, else it’s a waste of time , or worse yet could cause harm.

But that is using common sense; something that appears to be a “lost art” these days.

 

My point was that what we think we know for sure about CBT's effectiveness, we actually don't know for sure. Some aspects might be effective for some things in some situations. But the evidence that's out there is mostly so biased that it amounts to no evidence at all.

We just don't know.

 

I still think the bigger story is that people believed a cocaine addict whose theories had a massive influence in psychology.

 

This article by Stone et al:
http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/73/3/241:

And this one (also by Stone et al) is a cracker:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00415-011-6111-0

The whole article goes on to explore which neurological diseases are most commonly associated with “functional overlay”.

 

I agree, the evidence is weak. But if I was struggling with anxiety and depression, I would much prefer trying a form of CBT over taking a psych medicine. The cash cow is psych meds for Big Pharma.

 

If I had real depression - the full blown emptiness and despair - I would certainly try chatting to someone with a listening ear first before swallowing the pills. But I'd probably stay away from those who practice CBT to the letter. It takes a quite a strong view on some things - like the idea that you "ruminate" yourself into depression (by endlessly repeating negative thoughts). I think that's not supported by any good evidence, and it could harmful to tell a depressed person they need to stop the negative thoughts in order to recover.

 

Impossible to read this without thinking of our friends in the BPS Cult. It's almost as if there's a template somewhere.

On another note, what a civilized comments section following the article!

 

Given your avatar that's a very interesting observation.

 

Yes, it was quite enlightening, wasn't it? I remember when Masson's "Assualt on Truth" came out in the 80s, which revealed all the Anna O shenanigans. The psychodynamic crew did everything they could to first prevent Masson accessing the letters/source materials, and then later to destroy his reputation.