“Enough. Launching my yawl no more for fairyland, I stick to the piazza. It is my box-royal, and this amphitheater, my theater of San Carlo. Yes, the scenery is magical -- the illusion so complete.”[1]

As Herman Melville’s short story “The Piazza” draws to a close, its narrator makes a fateful decision – rather than confront a reality that challenges his assumptions about the world around him, he chooses to set that reality aside and embrace a fiction that gives him greater comfort. In his brief essay, “On Transience,” Sigmund Freud appears to stand in contrast to such an outlook when he states as part of a larger discourse on the necessity of coming to terms with the world as it is that “what is painful may nonetheless be true.”[2] One hundred and fifty years after his birth, however, it is worth examining whether Freud truly reflected then, or the culture influenced by his ideas reflects now, an attitude more akin to Freud’s stated position or that of Melville’s self-blinding narrator.

At the time he was writing, “Freud’s medical colleagues ridiculed his research, which could be neither confirmed nor disproven by independent experiments.” In response, Freud spent a lifetime seeking “to reconcile the findings of psychoanalysis with those of biology.”[3] The goal he set for himself was elusive, however. He was operating in the realm of powerful myths and compelling narratives, which, while seeming to describe in enlightening ways the basic drives of life, exist outside the confines of the scientific method.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Freud’s theories have always had an uneasy relationship with the scientific and medical communities. Despite varying fortunes throughout the years, vocal defenders and detractors have been an ever-present feature of discussion centered on the merits of psychoanalysis as an effective treatment tool. Mounting evidence in recent years, though, points to both the questionable foundation of Freudian analysis and the unreliable results of its use for patients.

The Guardian commented in 2002, for instance, that “as to Freud's claims upon truth, the judgment of time seems to be running against him.”[4] Similarly, a Newsweek article from earlier this year labeled Freud “modern history's most debunked doctor,” and stated with displeasure, “That he retains any life at all is remarkable.”[5] Both pieces reference the highly questionable tactics Freud used in coming to his conclusions – small sample sizes (often simply himself) as well as an assumption that he intuitively knew what all dream symbols pointed toward. Both also bring up recent withering criticisms from feminist scholars. These call into question Freud’s patriarchal assumptions regarding the nuclear family that form the basis for such concepts as “penis envy.”

Given the often great expense associated with treatment, Freudian analysis is also coming under increased scrutiny for its effectiveness. Writing in the May issue of the German publication Sign and Sight, Daniel Binswanger rattles off a list of damning evidence along these lines:

Statistically speaking, therapeutic success can only be considered modest. Where empirical experiments with control groups have been conducted, it can be shown that analysis works better than spontaneous healing in the case of only a few illnesses. And in comparison with other therapies, analysis does not fare very well. It is less effective in treating the symptoms of psychic dysfunction than behaviour therapy; on top of that, it takes longer and costs more. A study by the French Health Ministry reached this conclusion in 2004 – and was opposed so stubbornly by analysts that it had to be withdrawn. An earlier study by the WHO and the British Health Ministry came to similar conclusions. And the highly controversial study conducted by the Bernese psychologist Klaus Grawe for the German supervisory body bore similar results.[6]

Little of this controversy, however, is evident in Matthew von Unwerth’s recent historical reconstruction, Freud’s Requiem– a book that essentially serves as a meditation on the historical background of Freud’s essay “On Transience.” In that sense, then, von Unwerth is not unlike the larger culture that remains so captivated by Freud and his theories. Indeed, while all three articles referenced above see Freudian thought as deeply flawed and potentially harmful, each acknowledges the deep hold that thought retains on present-day language and world views.

"We refer to Freud every day when we call someone 'passive-aggressive'," says psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer.[7] This is hardly the only case of such influence. Freudian slips, oedipal complexes, ids and egos are part of our everyday language. This language, in turn, shapes our understanding. That Freud’s catch-phrases and basic concepts remain a part of our culture despite numerous attacks on their credibility indicates that something more is at work than scientific legitimacy can account for.

This non-scientific basis for acceptance likely arises from the powerful mix of ideas Freud pulled together. As the Guardian explains:

The answer lies in four factors. One is Freud's genius as author and ideologue. Another is the immense attraction of any theory that offers to each individual an explanation of his or her own hidden secrets. A third is the promise that science has at last delivered what there had never before been, namely, a proper theory of human nature. And finally there is the fact that at the centre of the package lay the most delicious, anxious, and titillating of all taboos: sex. Such a combination could hardly fail.[8]

But Freud sought more than to simply craft an attractive package that hinted at scientific truth while operating at the level of potent literature – he sought to claim scientific truth itself. His decision to prove the validity of his ideas rather than adapt those ideas to information that challenges his assumptions violates a basic principle of scientific investigation.

Roger Bacon expressed this concept of ongoing revision of theory based on all available data when he said “The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience.”[9] Freud should have recognized that scientific theories are themselves transient. With each passing day expose themselves to the risk of demise as knew knowledge is gained and new theories proposed that may better explain the world around us.

“Transience value is scarcity value in time,” Freud indeed argues, “Limitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises the value of the enjoyment.” In choosing the beauty of his ideas over the evidence against them, however, he contradicted his own advice. Instead, along with many yet today, he chose the path of those who revolt in their minds against mourning. This is the path where statements such as “Somehow or other this loveliness must be able to persist and escape all the powers of destruction.”[10] Mourning, though, is a necessary step – as Freud goes on to explain – that frees us “to replace the lost objects by fresh ones equally or still more precious.”[11]

The decision to sidestep mourning leaves individuals trapped in a cycle of self-imposed ignorance similar to that depicted in Melville’s short story. According to Scott A. Kemp, “Written in first person, the story is of a land-locked sailor who, by his own admission, wishes to forgo the reality of the world around him in favor of indulging his romantic ideations.”[12]

The narrator fixes his eyes upon a gleaming beauty across the valley from his home, expecting to find some sort of salvation there. But, when he visits that vision all he finds is a humble shack containing a weary woman. She admits looking out across the valley to the narrator’s home, saying "I have often wondered who lives there; but it must be some happy one.”[13] Such an encounter should have caused the narrator to re-assess his beliefs, but upon returning home he chooses instead to ignore this loss. He fails to mourn an idea and a concept more powerful in his mind than the reality he witnessed first hand.

“Not many patients still seek a cure on a psychoanalyst's couch four days a week,” states Jerry Adler, “but the vast proliferation of talk therapies—Jungian and Adlerian analyses, cognitive behavioral and psychodynamic therapy—testify to the enduring power of his idea.” Is it time for society to begin the mourning process over the Freudian claim to scientific legitimacy? Perhaps. If so, we may yet find fresh ideas that are “equally or still more precious.”

Some, indeed, are already beginning this process – though not without resistance. A recent article in The Age, for example, highlights the work of Freudian psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. Phillips is controversial among both Freudians and anti-Freudians for proclaiming the value of Freudian psychoanalysis while at the same time challenging its claims to scientific truth. For Phillips, there is a middle ground.[14]

"You can't predict what's going to happen in psychoanalysis,” he says. “You can't verify it or falsify it. The idea of doing psychoanalytic research seems to me to be a contradiction, because each question is different." In fact, Phillips “argues that the objective truth of Freud's theories is irrelevant.” He finds instead “that their therapeutic power lies in their qualities as stories.”

Freud certainly believed in the power of stories. His frequent use of myth as a way to express his core ideas and his beloved collection of mythological figurines indicates as much. But Freud also knew that mourning can be avoided, but not without cost. As the narrator of “The Piazza” laments, though he may choose to live in a world unimpeded by the reality he knows to be true, he cannot escape being haunted by what he has chosen to ignore. “Every night when the curtain falls, truth comes in with darkness.”[15] A complete illusion, it seems, remains just that.

We would do more to honor Freud’s legacy by following the advice he wished his friends would have taken in the essay “On Transience.” We should acknowledge with gratitude the compelling narrative he developed while mourning the transient nature of all scientific theory, including his own, that we may be free to uncover still more precious truths.

[1] Herman Melville, “The Piazza,” 1856. Available at The Life and Works of Herman Melville: http://www.melville.org/piazza.htm.

[2] Sigmund Freud, “On Transience,” trans. by James Strachey, in Matthew von Unwerth, Freud’s Requiem: Mourning, Memory and the Invisible History of a Summer Walk (New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2005), 216.

[3]von Unwerth, Freud’s Requiem, 106.

[4]“Scientist or storyteller?,”The Guardian, 22 June 2002. Available at: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,741510,00.html.

[5] Jerry Adler, “Freud in Our Midst,”Newsweek, 27 March 2006. Available at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11904222/site/newsweek/.

[6] Daniel Binswanger, “Me?,”Sign and Sight, 8 May 2006. Available at: http://www.signandsight.com/features/746.html.

[7] Adler, “Freud in Our Midst.”

[8]“Scientist or storyteller?”

[9] Roger Bacon, Opus Tertium. Donald Simanek, Science Quotes.

Available at: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sciquote.htm.

[10] Freud, “On Transience,” in von Unwerth, Freud’s Requiem, 216.

[11]Ibid., 219.

[12] Scott A. Kemp, "’They but reflect the things’: style and rhetorical purpose in Melville's ‘The Piazza Tale,’" Style, Spring 2001. Available at: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_1_35/ai_97074171.

[13] Melville, “The Piazza.”

[14]“Relishing Freud on the fringes,”The Age, 14 October 2006. Available at: http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/relishing-freud-on-the-fringes/2006/10/12/1160246257717.html.

[15] Melville, “The Piazza.”