The heated public controversy about Freud and psychoanalysis that has been raging in America for a number of years has meanwhile found its way into major German dailies as well (Frankfurter Rundschau 5. 1. 1996; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 11. 1. 1996; Die Tageszeitung 17. 1. 1996). Bohleber outlines the latest case of Freud-bashing in the United States, sparked off by plans for a Freud exhibition in Washington. Closer inspection of the motives and roots of the attacks on Freud lead to the hardly surprising conclusion that the popular parlour game >>Freud Bashing<< has crested the wave in a social climate marked by fundamentalist conservatism, the new prudishness, and a species of scientific puritanism born of blind belief in the >>exact sciences<<. The main representative of this attitude in connection with psychoanalysis is Adolf Grunbaum, while >>revisionists<< like Jeffrey Masson and Frederick Crews are to be regarded rather as exponents of the sexual counter-revolution. Bohleber's article is intended as an introductory commentary on the following essay by Jonathan Lear.
