ABSTRACT
The classic biography of Sigmund Freud is the three-volume masterpiece written by Ernest Jones, his devoted disciple. Richard Webster's critique of Freud rests upon two premises: that Freud saw psychogenic origins in everything and that Freud was a self-inflated egoist determined to fashion an empire that would be a permanent monument to his name. Freud's general statement was unexceptionable in folklore but was scorned within the medical establishment. What Freud did was to import into the medical establishment truths that were well known in folklore and literature and attempt to give them scientific respectability. Freud was at the very beginning of a new procedure and methodology, which has developed enormously since his day. In psychoanalysis Freud did discover a new method for investigating the mind. H. Ellenberger understood that Freud, like P. Janet and C. G. Jung, were trying to elucidate the mind's emotional functioning.
