[extropy-chat] Feynman on Freud?

[Damien Broderick]

At 07:07 PM 3/30/2004 -0800, Spike wrote:

> > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Feynman on Freud?
> >
> >    Remember that Feynman was given a psychiatric deferral
> > from the Army after his psychological exam...
>
>Ya gotta read the account of his psych exam in Surely You
>Jest, pages 137 to 145 Bantam edition.  Absolutely hilarious.
>{8^D  Ya gotta love the guy.

Yes, this is summarized also in James Gleick's biography. But psychiatry is 
*not* psychoanalysis, nor has Freud ever been in good odor with 
psychiatrists. I haven't been able to track down any explicit denunciations 
of Freud's approach from RF, although Gleick does say of his 
(understandable) attitude to those army shrinks: `Witchdoctor. Baloney. 
Faker. Feynman held an extreme view of psychiatry
 the unscientific 
hocus-pocus of their enterprise (conveniently shifting terminology, lack of 
reproducible experiments)
’ (223). BTW, during the second world war my 
wife's father was a young doctor who later specialized in radiology. The 
army used him as a psychiatrist, something I gather he had zero training 
in. Same old.

Damien Broderick