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62-478: The book had a mixed reception. The articles by Crews it reprinted, including "The Unknown Freud", have been seen as turning points in the popular reception of Freud and psychoanalysis, and some commentators credited Crews with discrediting Freud's theories and convincingly criticizing recovered-memory therapy. However, others criticized him for failing to resolve the issues he explored and questioned his understanding of repression . He has been seen as presenting some of

124-446: A "bizarre view" of "how scientists operate". The literature scholar Ritchie Robertson described The Memory Wars as representing "the more polemical version of anti-Freudian criticism". The psychologist Michael Billig described Crews as one of the most notable critics of Freud to have suggested that the memories reported by Freud's patients were suggested by Freud himself. He criticized Crews's view that repression must be understood as

186-670: A December 2019 episode of the Human Centered podcast. Freyd described the Center for Institutional Courage as “roughly equal parts a research center that can nurture new knowledge generation, and an outreach part that applies that knowledge to the world”. In early 2020, Freyd and her colleagues incorporated the Center for Institutional Courage 501(c)(3) , an institution dedicated to scientific research, wide-reaching education, and data-driven action promoting institutional courage. In 2021,

248-562: A completely unconscious process. The psychologist Louis Breger described Crews as one of Freud's most dismissive critics. He considered some of Crews' points valuable, but maintained that Crews, like other critics of Freud, too frequently jumps "from valid criticisms of some part of Freud's work to a condemnation of the whole." The psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell described "The Unknown Freud" as an important attack on Freud and psychoanalysis. However, she criticized it and Crews's other articles, arguing that Crews wrongly claimed that psychoanalysis

310-502: A distinction between training (which connotes "compliance and a rules-based process") and education, which "is associated with complex understanding, critical thinking, and the acquisition of knowledge based on empirical research and theory development". As it concerns sexual violence (a primary focus of Freyd's research), education is needed to help society understand "major aspects of the frequency, consequences, and dynamics of sexual harassment and assault". In early 2019, Freyd announced

372-447: A new research initiative to promote the study of institutional courage. The project supported interdisciplinary research on the interconnected problems of sexual violence, DARVO , and institutional betrayal , as well as ways in which institutional courage can flourish. Freyd described her current research agenda on institutional betrayal and courage and intention to create a nonprofit organization, The Center for Institutional Courage, on

434-570: A psychic numbing, blocking out memory of or feeling about the catastrophe", it appears that the trauma more often strengthens memories due to heightened emotional or physical sensations. (However these sensations may also cause distortions, as human memory in general is filtered both by layers of perception, and by "appropriate mental schema ... spatio-temporal schemata"). Jennifer Freyd Jennifer Joy Freyd ( / f r aɪ d / ; born October 16, 1957, in Providence, Rhode Island )

496-410: A survey of experimental literature on "the relationships between feeling and memory" in an attempt to determine the relevance of laboratory findings to "that aspect of the theory of repression which posits a relationship between hedonic tone and conscious memory." However, according to MacKinnon and Dukes, because Meltzer had an inadequate grasp of psychoanalytic writing he misinterpreted Freud's view that

558-734: A useful overview of recent criticism of Freud and convincingly criticizing psychoanalysis and recovered-memory therapy. However, he considered Crews too quick to assume that Freud was deliberately dishonest rather than self-deluded. He also suggested that because Crews's articles had been published in The New York Review of Books , which had been considered a magazine sympathetic to psychoanalysis, they aroused anger from psychoanalysts. Gerrard wrote that Crews discredited Freud. Dent wrote that The Memory Wars "provides an example of how people can absorb volumes of identical evidence without changing utterly divergent opinions". While she wrote that

620-1067: Is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association , the American Psychological Society , and the American Association for the Advancement of Science . Since 2005, Freyd has been the editor of the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation . She is also the leader of the Program on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sexual Violence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University . Freyd attended Friends Select School in Philadelphia and after three years of high school

682-405: Is a hallmark of mental wellbeing. One of the issues Freud struggled with was the status of the childhood "memories" recovered from repression in his therapy. He concluded that "these scenes from infancy are not always true. Indeed, they are not true in the majority of cases, and in a few of them they are the direct opposite of the historical truth". Controversy arose in the late 20th century about

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744-612: Is a repression (a "successful" one: through the new type of discharge, the old one has become superfluous)'. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan stressed the role of the signifier in repression — 'the primal repressed is a signifier' — examining how the symptom is 'constituted on the basis of primal repression, of the fall, of the Unterdrückung , of the binary signifier ... the necessary fall of this first signifier'. Family therapy has explored how familial taboos lead to 'this screening-off that Freud called "repression"', emphasising

806-550: Is an American psychologist, researcher, author, educator, and speaker. Freyd is an extensively published scholar who is best known for her theories of betrayal trauma , DARVO , institutional betrayal , and institutional courage. Freyd is the Founder and President of the Center for Institutional Courage, Professor Emerit of Psychology at the University of Oregon , Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in

868-635: Is no "mechanism" that represses unwanted thoughts. Since "all consciousness is conscious of itself" we will be aware of the process of repression, even if skilfully dodging an issue. The philosopher Thomas Baldwin stated in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995) that Sartre's argument that Freud's theory of repression is internally flawed is based on a misunderstanding of Freud. The philosopher Roger Scruton argued in Sexual Desire (1986) that Freud's theory of repression disproves

930-456: Is possible to implant false memories in individuals and that it is possible to "come to doubt the validity of therapeutically recovered memories of sexual abuse ... [as] confabulations ". However, criminal prosecutors continue to present them as evidence in legal cases. There is debate about the possibility of the repression of psychological trauma . While some evidence suggests that "adults who have been through overwhelming trauma can suffer

992-660: Is shared when they decide to disclose, and (2) by emphasizing that survivors' information will be passed along without their consent, she proposed that faculty educate colleagues and students about Title IX , sexual violence, and institutional betrayal , as well as provide resources for disrupting a culture of sexual violence and learning how to be a good listener. Freyd has proposed 10 steps by which institutions (including universities) can make progress toward institutional courage, such as encouraging whistleblowing and carrying out assessments of institutional betrayal through anonymous surveys. The Chronicle of Higher Education has covered

1054-783: Is therefore "useless as a proof of repression." The Memory Wars was published in 1995 by The New York Review of Books . The Memory Wars received positive reviews from the author Richard Webster in The Times Literary Supplement and the journalist Nicci Gerrard in New Statesman , mixed reviews from Vivian Dent in The New York Times Book Review , Laura Miller in Salon , and Elizabeth Gleick in Time , and negative reviews from

1116-627: Is understood as a defense mechanism that "ensures that what is unacceptable to the conscious mind, and would if recalled arouse anxiety , is prevented from entering into it." According to psychoanalytic theory , repression plays a major role in many mental illnesses , and in the psyche of the average person. American psychologists began to attempt to study repression in the experimental laboratory around 1930. However, psychoanalysts were at first uninterested in attempts to study repression in laboratory settings, and later came to reject them. Most psychoanalysts concluded that such attempts misrepresented

1178-452: Is unscientific familiar and unoriginal and wrote that his, "valorization of science makes him uncomfortable indeed with ambiguity, not to mention undecidability." Kahr called the book a "vicious piece of rhetoric" and argued that Crews's arguments against psychoanalysis were based on "scant solid data" and employed "the most purple prose I have read in many years". He also accused Crews of ignorance. Webster described The Memory Wars as one of

1240-514: The Center for Institutional Courage funded 15 research projects on the topics of institutional courage, institutional betrayal, and DARVO. Because of her research on sexual assault and institutional betrayal, Freyd was invited to the White House in 2014 to meet with White House advisors on violence against women, as well as New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand , to discuss how her research relates to campus sexual violence. In June 2017, Freyd

1302-468: The Freudian theory, leads to repression" and that they "failed to develop under laboratory control the experiences which are subsequently to be tested for recall". In MacKinnon and Dukes's view, psychologists who wanted to study repression in the laboratory "faced the necessity of becoming clear about the details of the psychoanalytic formulation of repression if their researches were to be adequate tests of

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1364-489: The Repressed", Crews criticizes recovered-memory therapy and discusses the case of Ross Cheit , arguing that while Cheit had "proved beyond question that his suddenly recalled 1968 molestation by a music camp administrator was real", it was questionable whether Cheit had ever repressed his memory of the incident. Crews suggests that Cheit "lost track of the incident" due to normal atrophy of memory and that his restored memory

1426-807: The School of Medicine, Faculty Fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Affiliated Faculty, Women's Leadership Lab, Stanford University and principal investigator of the Freyd Dynamics Lab. Freyd is a Member of the Advisory Committee, 2019–2023, for the Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. She

1488-642: The University of Oregon and Oregon State University are considering dropping the gendered titles in favor of 'emerit' or a similar gender-neutral alternative. Freyd was married to John Quincy "JQ" Johnson III, from 1984 until his death in 2012. Together they have three children. Around 1990, Freyd severed ties with her parents, stating that a recent therapy had uncovered memories of her father, mathematics professor Peter J. Freyd , abusing her during her childhood. Her parents, Pamela and Peter Freyd, disputed Freyd's claims of sexual assault, and in 1992 co-founded

1550-697: The University of Oregon. In 2017, Freyd filed suit against the University of Oregon for violating the Equal Pay Act , the Equal Protection Clause , and Title IX during her decades of employment. Women's and civil rights groups have collaborated on amicus briefs, including Equal Rights Advocates , the ACLU Women's Rights Project, the National Women's Law Center , the American Association of University Professors . The case

1612-889: The anthropologist Marilyn Ivy in The Nation and Brett Kahr in Psychoanalytic Studies . The book was also reviewed by Genevieve Stuttaford in Publishers Weekly , Sarah Boxer in The New York Times Book Review , the psychiatrist Anthony Storr in The Times , the biographer Paul Ferris in The Spectator , Peter L. Rudnytsky in American Imago , and by The Economist . Webster credited Crews with providing

1674-416: The beginning of the "Freud Wars", a long-running debate over Freud's reputation, work and impact. The philosopher Todd Dufresne suggested that The Memory Wars may be the book for which Crews is best known, and that the articles it reprinted were turning points in the popular reception of Freud and psychoanalysis. Repression (psychology) Repression is a key concept of psychoanalysis , where it

1736-841: The book raised important issues relevant to psychotherapy, such as the reliability of memory, the validity of the concept of repression, and the effects of therapies aimed at recovering memories, "true dialogue on these questions never emerges", and that the book "the book presents a mass of conflicting statements" from experts. Miller compared the book to "an online discussion". She described Crews's discussion of recovered-memory therapy as "scathing" and praised his style of writing. She credited Crews with supporting his objections to Freud's personal qualities and theories empirically with careful research, but also wrote that Crews's work could seem crankish and obsessive. She observed that scientific debate about repression could continue interminably, like an Internet "flame war". She wrote that while Crews argued that

1798-399: The claim, made by Karl Popper and Ernest Nagel , that Freudian theory implies no testable observation and therefore does not have genuine predictive power , since the theory has "strong empirical content" and implies testable consequences. The psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel stressed that 'if the disappearance of the original aim from consciousness is called repression, every sublimation

1860-477: The context of the institution". It is an extension of betrayal trauma theory. In a 2013 study, Carly P. Smith and Jennifer Freyd documented the psychological harm caused by institutional betrayal. Freyd introduced the term institutional courage in 2014. In a September 2019 article in the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, Freyd and Smidt emphasize the value of education for organizations that are taking steps toward institutional courage. The authors make

1922-432: The evidence that active memory suppression actually leads to decreased memory. It was found that in people with a repressive coping strategy , the willful avoidance of remembering certain memory contents leads to a significant reduction in memory performance for these contents. In addition, healthy people were better able to do this than anxious or depressed people. These results indicate that forgetting induced by suppression

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1984-407: The following original concepts to the trauma literature: betrayal trauma, DARVO, institutional betrayal, and institutional courage. Betrayal trauma is defined as a trauma perpetrated by someone whom the victim is close to and reliant upon for support and survival. DARVO is an acronym used to describe a common strategy of abusers. The abuser may: D eny the abuse ever took place, A ttack

2046-551: The grounds that their experimental techniques and laboratory controls had not been fully adequate, the psychoanalysts rejected them on the more sweeping grounds that whatever else these researches might be they simply were not investigations of repression." They relate that in 1934, when Freud was sent reprints of Rosenzweig's attempts to study repression, he responded with a dismissive letter stating that "the wealth of reliable observations" on which psychoanalytic assertions were based made them "independent of experimental verification." In

2108-470: The influence of the superego and the pressure of the repressed impulses, leading to behavior that is irrational, self-destructive , or antisocial. A psychoanalyst may try to ameliorate this behavior by seeking to discover the repressed aspects of the patient's mental processes and reintroducing them to their conscious awareness - "assuming the role of mediator and peacemaker ... to lift the repression". The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre maintained that there

2170-670: The last decade" have largely abandoned the term "repression", choosing instead to refer to the phenomenon as "perceptual defense". They argue that this change of terminology has had a major effect on how the phenomenon is understood, and that psychoanalysts, who had attacked earlier studies of repression, did not criticize studies of perceptual defense in a similar fashion, instead neglecting them. They concluded by noting that psychologists remained divided in their view of repression, some regarding it as well-established, others as needing further evidence to support it, and still others finding it indefensible. A 2020 meta-analysis of 25 studies examined

2232-408: The major premises of psychoanalysis are unsupported by scientific data, it was debatable how "coolly quantifiable" study of the mind and the emotions could be. She suggested that Freud's view of memory made for a "better story" than that of Crews and argued that Crews did not explain why Freud's views often felt as though they were true. Gleick considered the book an "impressive dissection of Freud and

2294-531: The more interesting questions: What do our society's obsessions with child abuse, or Satanic rituals, or aliens, really mean?" Ivy described the New York Review essays that Crews reprinted as "cranky", and criticized Crews for oversimplifying the issues involved in the debates over recovered memory and sexual abuse, and failing to account for the social context that made the concern with ritual abuse possible. She considered Crews's claim that psychoanalysis

2356-747: The most extreme criticism of Freud. The Memory Wars reprints essays and letters about Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, and recovered-memory therapy that first appeared in The New York Review of Books , as well as an afterword by Crews that first appeared in The Times Higher Education Supplement . In addition to Crews, the contributors include Harold P. Blum, Marcia Cavell, Morris Eagle, Matthew Erdelyi, Allen Esterson, Robert R. Holt , James Hopkins, Lester Luborsky , David D. Olds, Mortimer Ostow, Bernard L. Pacella, Herbert S. Peyser, Charlotte Krause Prozan, Theresa Reid, James L. Rice, Jean Schimek, Marian Tolpin; another contributor

2418-415: The most trenchant and significant contributions to the debate on recovered-memory therapy. The psychologist Jennifer Freyd wrote that Crews made incorrect claims about Cheit's case and that Cheit himself had objected to Crews's account of how he remembered being sexually abused as a child. She also argued that Crews's understanding of repression was confused and that he was mistaken to claim that Cheit's case

2480-552: The ongoing debate at the University of Oregon and the Association of American Universities (AAU). Dozens of scientists have criticized the AAU's proposed campus climate survey, with Freyd as a key player in the scientific debate. In 2021, Freyd argued that academic institutions should cease the use of the gendered honorary titles 'emeritus' and 'emerita' and instead adopt the gender-neutral term 'emerit'. As of early 2022, both

2542-546: The psychoanalyst Ernest Jones in the American Journal of Psychology in 1911. Like other psychologists who attempted to submit the claims of psychoanalysis to experimental test, they did not immediately try to develop new techniques for that purpose, instead conducting surveys of the psychological literature to see whether "experiments undertaken to test other theoretical assertions" had produced results relevant to assessing psychoanalysis. In 1930, H. Meltzer published

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2604-480: The psychoanalytic concept of repression. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud , in seeking to move away from hypnosis and towards encouraging patients to remember their past in a conscious state, observed that the process was strikingly difficult, and he began to suspect that there was some sort of psychic mechanism intervening to prevent access to consciousness. The intensity of his struggles to get patients to recall past events led him to conclude that there

2666-408: The psychologist Saul Rosenzweig and his co-author G. Mason criticized Meltzer, concluding that the studies he reviewed suffered from two basic problems: that the studies "worked with hedonic tone associated with sensory stimuli unrelated to the theory of repression rather than with conative hedonic tone associated with frustrated striving, which is the only kind of 'unpleasantnesss' which, according to

2728-488: The purpose of repression is to avoid "unpleasure", taking the term to mean simply something unpleasant, whereas for Freud it actually meant deep-rooted anxiety. Nevertheless, Meltzer pointed out shortcomings in the studies he reviewed, and in MacKinnon and Dukes's view he also "recognized that most of the investigations which he reviewed had not been designed specifically to test the Freudian theory of repression." In 1934,

2790-424: The recovered memory movement". However, while she wrote that "Crews demolishes Freud neatly, and his insistence that we rely on empirical evidence is perfectly reasonable", she added that "such evidence often does not exist when it comes to the emotional realm" or where "long-ago child abuse" was concerned. She also suggested that because he considered Freud a charlatan and rejected psychoanalysis, Crews had to "dismiss

2852-401: The repressed representative. In the primary repression phase, "it is highly probable that the immediate precipitating causes of primal repressions are quantitative factors such as ... the earliest outbreaks of anxiety, which are of a very intense kind". The child realizes that acting on some desires may bring anxiety . This anxiety leads to repression of the desire. When it is internalized,

2914-668: The rise of the Me Too movement and growing societal awareness of the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault. For example, in an interview with Diane Sawyer in 2017, actress and political activist Ashley Judd referenced DARVO when discussing the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations . Freyd has focused on ensuring that survivors do not lose their voice in the process of reporting sexual violence. Freyd asserted that since institutions can perpetrate abuse by (1) ignoring survivors' wishes about how their private information

2976-458: The same letter, Freud concluded that Rosenzweig's studies "can do no harm." MacKinnon and Dukes describe Freud's conclusion as a "first rather casual opinion", and state that most psychoanalysts eventually adopted a contrary view, becoming convinced that "such studies could indeed be harmful since they misrepresented what psychoanalysts conceived repression to be." Writing in 1962, MacKinnon and Dukes state that experimental studies "conducted during

3038-479: The status of such "recovered memories", particularly of child abuse, with many claiming that Freud had been wrong to ignore the reality of such recovered memories. While accepting "the realities of child abuse", the feminist Elaine Showalter considered it important that one "distinguishes between abuse remembered all along, abuse spontaneously remembered, abuse recovered in therapy, and abuse suggested in therapy". Memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus has shown that it

3100-471: The term 'repression' as early as 1824, in a discussion of unconscious ideas competing to get into consciousness. Freud considered that there was "reason to assume that there is a primal repression , a first phase of repression, which consists in the psychical (ideational) representative of the instinct being denied entrance into the conscious", as well as a second stage of repression, repression proper (an "after-pressure"), which affects mental derivatives of

3162-698: The theory" but soon discovered that "to grasp clearly even a single psychoanalytic concept was an almost insurmountable task." MacKinnon and Dukes attribute this situation to the way in which Freud repeatedly modified his theory "without ever stating clearly just which of his earlier formulations were to be completely discarded, or if not discarded, how they were to be understood in the light of his more recent assertions." MacKinnon and Dukes write that, while psychoanalysts were at first only disinterested in attempts to study repression in laboratory settings, they later came to reject them. They comment that while "the psychologists had criticized each other's researches largely on

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3224-399: The threat of punishment related to this form of anxiety becomes the superego , which intercedes against the desires of the id (which works on the basis of the pleasure principle ). Freud speculated that "it is perhaps the emergence of the super-ego which provides the line of demarcation between primal repression and after-pressure". Neurosis may occur when the personality develops under

3286-425: The victim for attempting to hold the abuser accountable; and claim that they, the abuser, are the real victim in the situation, thus R eversing the V ictim and O ffender. Institutional betrayal refers to "wrongdoings perpetrated by an institution upon individuals dependent on that institution, including failure to prevent or respond supportively to wrongdoings by individuals (e.g. sexual assault) committed within

3348-437: The way that 'keeping part of ourselves out of our awareness is a very active process ... a deliberate hiding of some feeling from our family'. According to the psychologist Donald W. MacKinnon and his co-author William F. Dukes, American psychologists began to attempt to study repression in the experimental laboratory around 1930. These psychologists were influenced by an exposition of the concept of repression published by

3410-480: Was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology . In 1983 she earned her Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford University . Freyd was an assistant professor at Cornell University from 1983 to 1987, until she was hired with tenure as an associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon in 1987. In 1992, Freyd was promoted to full professor at

3472-612: Was followed by "The Revenge of the Repressed". In "The Unknown Freud", Crews writes that psychoanalysis is in decline due to its limited effectiveness as a form of treatment. He discusses critiques of psychoanalysis such as the philosopher Adolf Grünbaum 's The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984) and the psychologist Malcolm Macmillan's Freud Evaluated (1991); he maintains that no one has refuted Grünbaum's charge that clinical evidence cannot be used to validate "Freudian hypotheses" and that Macmillan convincingly criticizes Freud's theories of personality and neurosis . In "The Revenge of

3534-503: Was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of Freyd's appeal on March 15, 2021. In the last two decades, Freyd has researched and written extensively on sexual abuse and memory . Freyd's initial empirical discovery of representational momentum and shareability led to her further explore the relationship between trauma memories and the element of betrayal. Freyd introduced

3596-406: Was identified with the pseudonym "Penelope". Crews writes that his initial purpose in writing the book reviews included in the work was to explain how scholarly understanding of Freud and psychoanalysis has been changed by recent studies and "methodological critiques". He adds that he expected one of his articles would be controversial. The article was published under the title "The Unknown Freud", and

3658-600: Was invited again to speak at a meeting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine , where she presented on institutional betrayal and sexual harassment in academia. In an open essay, entitled "Gender Discrimination, Dr. Jennifer Freyd's Lawsuit, & Recommendations for Universities," the author underscored the far-reaching consequences of gender discrimination against women in higher education. Freyd's research on sexual violence and institutional betrayal has become increasingly prominent with

3720-656: Was irrelevant to the repressed memory debate. The philosopher John Forrester described Crews's article "The Unknown Freud" as a celebrated and widely-read article. He criticized Crews for discussing Grünbaum's criticisms of psychoanalysis in The Foundations of Psychoanalysis as though they were "already proven and widely accepted" and for presenting a "deeply personal" attack on Freud as though it were scholarly criticism. He noted that while Crews made criticisms of psychoanalysis similar to those already made by Grünbaum, he took them to extremes. He also accused Crews of having

3782-497: Was responsible for the recovered memory movement. She argued that the two are connected not by an emphasis on parental seduction or abuse, but by the fact that in both cases their patients use discussion of sexuality as "the main manifestation of their condition." She also argued that Crews misunderstood Freud's view of memory, and that of psychoanalysis more generally, and incorrectly claimed that hysteria does not exist. The political scientist José Brunner described "The Unknown Freud" as

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3844-718: Was some force that "prevented them from becoming conscious and compelled them to remain unconscious", and which actively "pushed the pathogenetic experiences in question out of consciousness." Freud gave the name of repression to this hypothetical process. He would later call the theory of repression "the corner-stone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests" ("On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement"). The psychologist and founder of pedagogy , Johann Friedrich Herbart , whose ideas had influenced Freud's psychiatry teacher Theodor Meynert , had used

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