My reading of the different responses to Crews and Mitchell is quite
different. In fact I had never thought before to put them in the same
category at all. The whole spirit of Mitchell's body of work was to find
ways to make psychoanalysis as a therapy more effective. His criticisms of
older ideas were intended to yield new and fresh approaches to the analytic
situation. Crews, as I read him, had as his main goal to attack
psychoanalysis and shows that it was good for nothing. Mitchell
consistently demonstrated an excellent understanding of the psychoanalytic
ideas with which he disagreed and his descriptions of them in his work is
clear and accurate. He appreciated post-Freudian developments and did not
confuse psychoanalysis with Freud's contribution. Crews consistently
misstates basic ideas about Freud and psychoanalysis. His inappropriately
equates psychoanalysis with Freud's work.

Regarding the "science" issue. Although I have devoted a great deal of time
to trying to bring a scientific point of view to psychoanalysis I do not
believe that the factors limiting the acceptance of psychoanalysis in the
larger community have much to do with its scientific status. First,
psychoanalytic ideas have a vast impact on contemporary thought to the
point where many analytic ideas are cliches and common places in most
people's discourse. Second the vigorous rejectors of analytic ideas seem
remarkably uninterested in the data that is available (which is one of the
reasons they tend to conflate Freud's writings with the entirity of
psychoanalysis.).

At 12:13 PM 12/29/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Two thoughts about recently deceased Stephen Mitchell:
>
>His criticism's of classical psychoanalysis overlapped considerably with
>those of  Frederick Crews, yet he was well accepted within the
>psychoanalytic world while Crews has taken on the status of the
>Anti-Christ. (I must exclude most social-worker-psychoanalysts who do
>not seem to know anything about Crews and who are amazed that anyone can
>find any reason at all to criticize psychoanalysis). Mitchell was sharp
>in his criticism; he didn't pull any punches, nor did he conclude his
>articles with the usual platitude that Freud, despite being wrong about
>everything as well as being an all around bad guy, was still a world
>class genius. Could Mitchell's acceptance within psychoanalysis and
>Crew's rejection be due to (1) Crews' biting humor, (2) Crews'
>non-psychoanalyst status, or (3) Crews' rejection of all psychoanalytic
>approaches, including Mitchell's relational orientation?
>
>Mitchell did a good job of raising serious questions about classical
>psychoanalysis, but he seemed to miss the-in my opinion- obvious point
>that relational psychoanalysis suffers the same deficiencies, the most
>notable of which is that it, too, is unconnected to any body of
>scientific knowledge nor does it have any research backing. Freud could
>feel that research is unnecessary for psychoanalytic advancement; yet,
>at this time, it is unlikely that psychoanalytic theorists can be taken
>seriously outside their own group of followers without having a
>scientific research basis for their claims.
>
>Howard D. Eisman, Ph.D.

Robert M. Galatzer-Levy, M.D.            Telephone 312 922 5077
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