Rescuing Psychoanalysis from Freud: The Common Project of Stekel, Jung and Ferenczi

Abstract

This article offers an extended discussion of Wilhelm Stekel's "On the History of the Analytic Movement" (1926), published in English translation for the first time in "Psychoanalysis and History" 7(1) in 2005. It begins with a critique of the presentation of Stekel's text by Jaap Bos, who takes a purely rhetorical approach that seeks to exclude a psychological analysis of the author's motives. Bos's characterization of Stekel is likewise contested as unduly negative in crucial respects. The second section argues that it remains the task of the historian to search for truth. Attacks on the credibility of Jung by Harold Blum and Kurt Eissler are shown to reflect a bias that causes them to neglect the empirical evidence corroborating Jung's testimony concerning key events in his relationship to Freud. The third section lays out the numerous ways in which Stekel, Jung and Ferenczi independently arrived at remarkably similar judgements concerning Freud's character, and how his human failings exerted a harmful effect on the development of psychoanalysis. The final section moves to a discussion of how Stekel joins with Jung and Ferenczi in defining a common project of rescuing what is best in psychoanalysis from Freud's demands for personal loyalty and his attempts to subjugate his followers to intellectual tyranny.