(8 of 10)
On the analysts' side, there is case after case in which patients who undergo analysis are relieved of their symptoms of neurosis. The analysts are trying to gather figures to prove the worth of their methods, but the usual criterion of success is that analyst and analysand shall agree on the outcome. Naturally, the analyst is biased, and the patient may be the victim of the Freudian mechanism of wish fulfill ment. It is useless to go by the opinions of unbelievers, because most of the unanalyzed tend to feel superior to those who have succumbed sufficiently to life's stresses to pay heavily to go to a "talking doctor," "head-shrinker," or "witch doctor," and have their "heads candled." On the other hand, it is all but impossible to argue with an orthodox Freudian (as with an adherent of any other "one true faith") because anybody who rejects the dogma is instantly accused of doing so only because he has an inner, unconscious "resistance" against unpalatable truth.
Guilty But Traumatized. Far more important than the relative handful of patients treated by the thin cohort of psychoanalysts centered mostly in New York and Hollywood are the millions who are daily influenced, often unknowingly, by the penetration of Freudian theory. A social worker visiting a family with health and welfare problems looks for unhealthy father-son or mother-daughter relationships. The probation officer reporting on a juvenile delinquent discusses the family background with the court in terms of aggression and compensation. So does a truant officer. In Wheeling, W. Va. last week, Thomas Williams Jr., 14, was found legally sane, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a nine-year-old boy after two psychiatrists appointed by the court had declared him insane. He had a romantic attachment to his mother and a desire to kill his father (straight Oedipus complex) that exploded on the young victim instead.
Benjamin Spock's Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, by which millions of U.S. children are now being raised, is no Freudian text by a long shot, but most
of its prescriptions, from feeding and
toilet training to "play with peers," are solidly rooted in Freud's concepts. In nursery schools, self-expression owes almost all to Freud. Picking a vocation or choosing a college course, countless U.S. youths, submit themselves to aptitude tests and other psychological gimmicks based on Freudian interpretation of personality structure; e.g., the Rorschach inkblot tests may reveal hidden hostilities which would make a career as a sales man unprofitable, or dependency yearnings which would bar promotion as a foreman or executive. A.firm of consultants is doing big business providing psychologists to industry. Its biggest client: Chicago's case-hardened Inland Steel Co., which employs 15 psychologists part-time to help in picking new employees and to improve old hands for promotion.