Letter to the New York Review

                           

     A diatribe is no easy reading. With Mr Frederick  Crews and his periodic tirades against Sigmund Freud we are faced with an exercise in a ludicrous crusade directed by reasons I would not dare to delve in, on account of an absurd, unceasing and unending hatred against  one of the great personalities in the history of man's quest to understand the psyche.

      There are many things in Mr Crews' periodic jeremiads against the man who brought understanding and - what Mr Crews would have some difficulty to handle - penetrating grasp to many psychic problems, who seemed at first to be inextricably entwined in the weed of prejudice.

     Mr Crews seems to be a man who relishes in his monomaniacal quest of a sorry task. Herakles the semigod of Antiquity, instead of Mr Crews, is enshrined in immortal fame on account of his twelve great works.  Mr Crews is no demigod that I know of,  but methinks he is quite concentrated in his task, that has something of another famous personage.  No doubt, Mr Crews has found his windmills of choice, as one sees by the third page of The New York Review. In the contents of his new article "Freud: in His Time and Ours", and his description of his announced new book, which is not bound to surprise many a reader - "Frederick Crews's new book, mirabile dictur "Freud: The making of an illusion" will be published in the fall".

       Perhaps the problem Mr Crews had with Dr Freud - who knows, perhaps a failed analysis? - has become a torrent in the confused thoughts of this scholar of sorts. This monomaniacal quest of the golden mystery of  Freud's enduring fame and - what is perhaps an irritant to such a person who seems literally intent in exposing the so-called illusion brought by Dr Freud.

        Great men are bound to suffer by attacks of contemporary thinkers. But it becomes truely bewildering that one of the great thinkers of mankind - who has brought to so many people in so many lands a vision of understanding and even redemption to lives hassled by prejudice and small, dirty minds - continues to prove his modernity and enduring service as an opener of minds to so many readers and patients distributed in this wide and sometimes dangerous world. Evil perhaps is everywhere. But good old Dr Freud continues to prove his value and valour.  Perhaps even lesser minds  can be understood by Dr Sigmund Freud.

          What it is difficult to understand are the repeated times this magazine of yours opens its pages to such people. As Dr Freud cannot anylonger chuck  Mr Frederick Crews, and his sorry self-assigned quest, what is bewildering is the insistence of the New York Review in publishing the rants of Mr Crews. What you don't seem to understand is that, while Dr Freud is still very much alive in so many good sessions of psychotherapeutic analysis, that is definitely not the case with the rancorous tirades of Mr Crews. In a way, though, he brings water to the mills of good old psychotherapeutic treatment given by  the demon itself, Dr Sigmund Freud !

           But what remains really difficult to understand is why you give so much space to the dreary tirades of someone who has obviously lost his opportunity to understand the mighty and marvellous megagift to humankind given by good, old Doctor Freud.

           For many years still, perhaps centuries, Dr Freud shall remain alive in bookshops, with psychotherapists  and the like, endeavouring to open new lives to many people who feel themselves in need of the Viennese Doctor's attention.

          I think that there is no greater praise to such a genius than to find himself still an object of absurd hatred and monomaniacal rants!  

 Nota. Esta carta, dirigida pelo blogger supra-indicado, a seu devido tempo, ao editor da revista The New York Review of Books, não foi publicada por motivos que desconheço. Tem-se a impressão de que estamos diante d'une chasse gardée. É realmente lamentável que se coloque uma cerca a opiniões que discrepem de alguma forma, seja  radical ou não, da visão de Mr Frederick Crews. A censura pode vestir-se de diversas roupas, muitas delas enganosas. Por sua própria natureza, ao tentar barrar visões alternativas, ela será sempre necessariamente odiosa, própria de fases históricas manchadas pelo preconceito. A Censura, esta mancha que deforma tantos períodos e idades da Humanidade, carecerá sempre dos cajados da intimidação e da repressão. Pelo que representa, como a vanguarda do atraso e da deformação, ela está destinada a morrer, seja lenta, seja abruptamente, sob o vigilante gládio da Liberdade.