Introduction

The last few years have seen increasingly virulent attacks on psychoanalysis, mainly in the United States, but also in certain European countries. The principal target of these onslaughts is the figure of Sigmund Freud. ‘Freud-bashing’ has become an established concept and anti-Freudianism a movement. Anyone who joins it and barefacedly takes the floor has an opportunity, thanks to the media’s astounding abrogation of their critical faculties in this polemical field, to spread his views abroad and make a name for himself in soapbox fashion-that is, without the need for any substantive input of his own.