“All My Efforts Valueless”

In this chapter, I document Freud’s concern about and sustained entanglement with the suggestion objection—the objection that psychoanalytic findings were due to suggestion of Freud’s ideas to his patients rather than to genuine etiological discoveries—as the major challenge to his clinical theory. I show that Freud was aware of the power of the suggestion objection from early in his career. He was also aware that his psychoanalytic method using anticipatory interpretations, on which his clinical discoveries rested, was particularly vulnerable to the accusation that he suggested his theoretical ideas to his patients. I review Freud’s polemical responses to the suggestion objection and show why they were inadequate.