ABSTRACT
There are many good reasons to steer clear of psychoanalysis. The first four chapters of this book explore some of those reasons, focusing first on the relationship between psychoanalysis and science. I describe how I was born into the world as a rationalist, taught that there is a sharp moral distinction between science and superstition. Psychology and psychiatry thrive on this opposition, and there is also, at the heart of quasi-scientific attempts to dispatch Freud, a necessary link with political movements, with those that either disparage or value the role of subjectivity in human action. We start at home.
