Seductive Mirage

Whereas many critics of psychoanalysis have attacked Freud's arguments and the scientific basis of his theories, Esterson's critique is more radical and startling in that he calls into question the alleged factual evidence which supposedly formed the basis of Freud's conclusions. Beginning with the celebrated "child seduction" stories that formed the origin of psychoanalysis, Esterson demonstrates by historical detective work and especially by comparing the variations in Freud's own accounts, that Freud's reports of what his clients told him cannot be relied upon and were shaped by Freud to support his own conclusions. Esterson claims that Freud's patients did not report their seduction in childhood - instead, he argues, Freud posits childhood seductions which the patients could not "remember". Time amd again, Esterson claims, supposed "facts" turn out to be nothing of the kind, owing much to misconceptions or faulty recollections on Freud's part, or to Freud's habit of describing his own inferences as if the patient had explicitly voiced them. There is even, claims Esterson, evidence of deliberate manipulation or outright invention of alleged data.
Such evidence undermines not only Freud's clinical claims but also his reputation as an inquirer of unspotted integrity. By a close dissection of Freud's writing, Esterson claims to lay bare the dearth of empirical support for psychoanalysis, the weaknesses in Freud's arguments, and the specious tissue of persuasive rhetoric which has seduced so many intelligent people into supposing that Freud is a thinker of major stature.