A decent film but . . .

It completely ignores one of the most important things about his work and theories--i.e., how his ideas about childhood sexuality came into being. Initially, his theory about neurosis was that it developed as a result of trauma suffered as a child. Frequently, these trauma took the form of sexual abuse. He quite naturally came to this idea as the majority of his patients reported they had experienced this abuse at the hands of a parent or other trusted family member. This troubled Freud greatly to think that so many upstanding Victorian era citizens were actually abusing their own children. But these were the facts that presented themselves, and so his theory developed accordingly. However, his ideas came under scathing criticism (in the film, we see his later theory about childhood sexuality and the oedipal complex causing a near riot--but in point of fact, this earlier theory was much more disturbing to the intelligentsia of the time). In particular, one of his closest friends and fellow doctor excoriated his original paper on neurosis (the title escapes me; I'll have to look it up and add it later). Unfortunately, the brilliant Freud took this criticism to heart, little realizing that this collaborator resisted his findings so fiercely because he had abused his own child. Since Freud himself was terribly troubled by the idea that so many of the adults around him were pedophiles, he looked at his original theory and tried to come up with another explanation. Considering the level of his brilliance, the fact he was able to develop a new theory completely turning his old ideas on their head was a forgone conclusion. Thus, he now conceived of the idea that the parents had not abused their children sexually--that these tales told by his patients were actually just the fantasies they had had as children--children who had wanted to sexually possess the opposite sexed parent. Thus was born the fiction of childhood sexuality and the oedipal complex--a theory devised to alleviate his own considerable anxiety concerning his original findings, not to mention the anxieties of his circle of fellow doctors. Thus, the real-life suffering of children, treated as sexual-playthings by their parents, became merely their fantasies of their own desires. This corruption of reality has caused great suffering through the years as real victims of real abuse were informed that they had really imagined it all. Freud was a blindingly great genius--and many of his pronouncements have stood the test of time--but this, his central finding, based on the idea of protecting the parents at the cost of the child, continues to infiltrate, corrupt, and blind much of the psychological community to the truth. Fortunately, more and more, the truth is being revealed, and the idea of childhood sexuality is being tossed into the garbage bin.

For those interested in more about the subject, I strongly recommend the book, For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in childrearing and the roots of violence by Alice Miller. Any of her books are quite good, however--especially The Drama of the Gifted Child (also known as Prisoners of Childhood, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware and Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth. Also good is The History of Childhood by Lloyd deMause.

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