Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is a man often credited with a lot of things: with discovering or “unlocking” the unconscious mind; with exposing a prudish and trepidatious society to the power of sexuality; with boldly and creatively speculating about the meaning of dreams, the neuronal basis of behavior, the origins of religion, the drive towards self-destruction.

That view of Freud is one which is conveniently separated from his life and, more often than not, from his work and writings as well. Biographies of Freud have often been written by adherents of Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, and access to important letters and writings has been tightly controlled by his descendants and followers over many decades.

Frederick Crews, a professor emeritus of English in Berkeley, initially applied Freud’s psychoanalytic theories to literary criticism. Becoming disillusioned with its shaky foundations—and especially with the risks of psychoanalysis as a form of therapy—he then made it his mission to document who exactly Freud was and what he did.

Freud: The Making of an Illusion (2017) is the culmination of this project (some would say obsession) that started in the 1970s. At 746 pages (666 pages before the notes start), this is a hefty tome. It is organized chronologically, but this is not so much a biography but a re-assessment of Freud’s life from his student years to the early years of the psychoanalytic movement.

Past as prologue

Reduced to a few salient points, the book argues that Freud is guilty of harming his patients, of promoting quackery, of completely misrepresenting his case studies and persistently covering up the lack of any actual cures, of producing his wildest theories under the influence of cocaine (and then pretending they were the result of careful observations), of projecting his own sexual fantasies and frustrations upon his patients, of creating a self-serving cult that applied its beliefs in therapeutic practice without adhering to foundational ethical principles like primum non nocere, secundum cavere, tertium sanare (first, do no harm; second, be careful; third, heal).

Some of the most destructive aftershocks of Freudian thinking, Crews argues, could be felt as late as the 1980s, when “therapists” extracted false confessions of satanic ritual abuse from hundreds of children, producing a moral panic that tore apart families and even resulted in prison sentences which had to later be revoked. The underlying idea—that memories of traumatic events are repressed and can only be recovered by a skillful therapist—was one Freud himself believed in (and attempted to apply to patients) early in his career.

From 1912 to 1927, a Secret Committee with Freud at its center was tasked with defending Freud’s beliefs against dissenters and with protecting the central dogmas of psychoanalysis. Its members were gifted signet rings. (Credit: Israel Museum. Fair use.)

In Crews’ retelling, Freud starts his therapeutic career being absolutely convinced of one important truth: cocaine can cure anything. He used it over many years, he advocated for it, he prescribed it. For Freud, cocaine seemed to be the ticket to achieving wealth and fame, a miracle medicine whose countless potential applications had been overlooked.

Freud’s cocaine advocacy is an important example of his frequent total disregard for scientific principles and methods. Crews documents how Freud’s cocaine publications dramatically misrepresented his actual experience with the drug, much of which was the ultimately disastrous attempt to cure his friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow of morphine addiction using cocaine.

Blaming the victims

Freud would be an incredulous proponent of pseudoscientific and non-scientific ideas throughout his life. After his death, Freud’s followers carefully curated which letters and unpublished writings were permitted to be seen by researchers who were not part of the inner circle. This was very effective, and the public perception of Freud today is still shaped by the censorship actions taken by Freud’s true believers.

Freud’s correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess was held back into the 1980s due to the potential for embarrassing the master. Fliess, whose pseudoscientific idea of “biorhythms” still has some currency in the present, was also an advocate of nasogenital reflex theory, the idea that sexual problems are linked to the nose. I would say that you can’t make this stuff up, but evidently you can.

Freud blamed Emma Eckstein’s “hysteria” on masturbation. He recommended a quack surgery based on the belief that the nose is linked to the genitals. The botched operation almost killed Eckstein and left her disfigured. (Public domain, circa 1890.)

Freud considered Fliess “the Kepler of biology”. He embraced his friend’s most bizarre numerological speculations; nasogenital reflex theory had the additional benefit of connecting well with Freud’s own speculations about the alleged sexual origins of countless diseases. He referred a female patient, Emma Eckstein, whose “hysteria” he attributed to masturbation, to Fliess for a nasal surgery.

A near-fatal botched operation left Eckstein disfigured and suffering from frequent bleeding. In what was a common pattern, Freud blamed the victim: Eckstein’s bleeding was itself a “hysterical” symptom, a psychosomatic reflection of her inner wishes.

But when it comes to victim-blaming, that case does not hold a candle to Freud’s treatment of “Dora”, a young girl who was repeatedly sexually harassed by a friend of her family, starting at the age of 14. Her family did not take Dora’s word for it, however, and asked Freud to treat Dora’s “hysteria”. Freud happily complied with the parents’ wishes, and repeatedly attempted to pressure Dora into admitting that she secretly wanted the sexual relationship, after all.

Ice water

The reference to masturbation in the Eckstein case was not unusual but typical. As Crews puts it (p. 642f.):

As we have seen, Freud regarded masturbation—either its continuing practice or its abrupt and traumatic abandonment—as the precipitating agent of most neuroses. Through the first decade of the twentieth century, his relentless grilling of patients was chiefly focused on uncovering their histories in that regard. Albert Hirst recalled that when he entered treatment with Freud at age sixteen, the therapist immediately required him to sit “in the position in which I masturbated.” Other patients were enjoined not to masturbate for the duration of their care, lest a “current neurosis” be triggered.

But in most cases willpower alone, Freud believed, was insufficient to keep the hand from straying downward. In two 1910 letters, one to Ludwig Binswanger and the other to the Swiss psychiatrist Alphonse Maeder, he recommended that a masturbation-addicted male patient be subjected to treatment with a “psychrophore”—a catheterlike device for inserting ice water into the urethra. If Freud’s name were to invoke the image of a psychrophore instead of a couch or a cigar, we would be spared much needless discourse about his sponsorship of erotic freedom.

Far from being a trailblazer for future sexual revolutions, Freud held on to his reactionary views, even as scientists started to debunk the 19th century myths of “self-abuse”. Those ideas may seem funny today, but they were used to inflict untold psychological and physical harm in the form of more or less dangerous “cures”.

Powerful stories

It’s a common belief that Freud’s findings about what makes humans tick were real, but were primarily a reflection of a wealthy Viennese clientele who collected neuroses the way other people collect stamps or paintings. While some of Freud’s patients could be described that way, Crews makes it clear that the foundational ideas of psychoanalysis—such as the Oedipus complex—were not derived from real cases, but from Freud’s fondness for uninhibited speculation.

One of the big questions for me about Freud’s ideas has always been why people chose to give them any credence in the first place. Psychoanalysis in particular was never science, and Freud was neither as capable nor as meticulous as many other scientists of his era. Crews offers an answer which I find compelling: Freud was a brilliant storyteller.

Freud’s case stories were written like novels, and the psychoanalyst is the protagonist who cleverly deduces the truth from a few subtle clues. Never mind the fact that some of these stories were so utterly implausible that they are almost certainly complete fabrications—and others were, as we know from other evidence, heavily fictionalized or effectively retconned by Freud to bring them in line with his own frequently revised speculations.

Crews compares Freud to Arthur Conan Doyle, and Freud endowed himself with Holmes-like powers in many of his tales. These stories helped to cultivate the modern image of Sigmund Freud: wry, wise, witty and worldly.

Freud’s speculations about dreams, his invocations of mythological figures, his organizing of our lives into stages and drives, all of this speaks powerfully to our passion for story. Does it matter if much or all of it is bunk? It does to the extent that it hurts people, and to the extent that we want to call any of it science or medicine.

The verdict

Freud: The Making of an Illusion is still a necessary book, because psychoanalysis is still an influential idea, for the same reasons it became influential to begin with. Its defenders have simultaneously attempted to put distance between themselves and Freud, while also falsely crediting him for ideas that did not originate with him (see the Crews/Orbach dialogue in The Guardian, for example).

This is also a flawed book. Crews holds Freud in contempt, and in his effort to recast history, he often strays from facts to speculation. Did Freud have an abusive relationship with a sibling as a child? Did he fancy his own mother? Was he under the influence of cocaine when he wrote some essay or paper?

The book could be 150 pages shorter and more persuasive without the most speculative portions. This is not to say that Crews is sloppy; factual claims are generally very well-supported. Crews also always makes it clear when he’s theorizing. I had the impression that the 86-year-old author wanted to use what may be his last major work to tell us everything there is to know about Freud—including all of Crews’ own speculations and pet theories.

The tendency of the author to take these speculative detours works against the book in another important way: it gives Crews’ detractors plenty of ammunition to paint him as an obsessed curmudgeon with an axe to grind. I give the book 3.5 out of 5 stars mainly for this reason, rounded up to 4 because I’m quite certain that Freud: The Making of an Illusion takes us, at least, in the direction of a more realistic assessment of Sigmund Freud.

This light is one of the rare products that seriously impresses me. The build quality is excellent with a metal case. The light is held together using hex screws and is designed to be opened by the user. Serfas sells replacement parts for the lights such as handle bar mounts and replacement batteries. The light is seriously bright and lights up the whole road perfectly. I absolutely recommend getting this light. Its the last one you will ever need to buy.

A friend and I both purchased these lights from different sources. They worked fine for a while but after a few months of use we both had them fail. For me the rear light still works fine but the front light fails to hold a charge. A few days of sitting unused will cause them to drop from fully charged to empty. My friend had similar issues with them not turning on anymore. Would avoid this brand in the future.

The GnuBee is a network attached storage device supporting up to 6 sata drives and runs linux with full user control given. I ordered one and it arrived fairly quick considering it was shipped from far away. Assembly is really simple. You just have to attach the side plates to the pcb. When I ordered I couldn’t work out what the USB UART cable was for and did not get one. I later found out that this cable is super important for installing an OS on the GnuBee. I sourced a cable from ebay which worked but this prevented me from using the device for a month.

I found the documentation available online to be really lacking and it took a lot of investigating to work out how to get something running on the device but there is a fairly active community on the mailing list which was a huge help. Once I got debian installed and working I was able to use the familiar linux tools to set everything up to my liking. I wanted to run a speed test on the device but I wasn’t able to find a fair way to do it. I network mounted the device via SSH and I was getting 4MB/s over the local network but multiple posts online have pointed out that SSH is inefficient for large data transfers. I was not able to find a faster way to network mount that maintained the security of SSH.

Overall I think the hardware is designed right and once you get it installed and set up its really quite easy to manage. Actually getting it to that point took a while but this can all be fixed later via documentation improvements.

Sound quality is really quite nice and better than the others I tested at the same price point. Its not quite as good as the Bose ones I tried but those were quite a bit more expensive. The padded ear parts are super comfortable and I feel fine wearing it all day at work.

I was really quite liking these but then after a few months usage I saw that the plastic had cracked. After some inspection I noticed this was a design flaw, the underside of this plastic part is hollowed out to make room for the cable and this has resulted in a really weak spot. It should be fairly easy to fix with some glue but its a little disappointing to see such a flaw

photo of damage (Own work. License: CC-BY-SA.)

Fennec is a build of Firefox’s source available through f droid. This allows installing Firefox without having to use the google play store.

Fennec comes with most, if not all, the features of Firefox. The F Droid page says " It’s focused on removing any proprietary bits found in official Mozilla’s builds." I haven’t noticed any missing features though. You can add extensions like u block origin.

Speed seems on par with other browsers.

Deja Vu stores the locations of wifi APs and cell towers on your phone. This allows for greater accuracy than using gps alone and allows you to do it without pinging google may times a day like stock android phones with location services turned on do.

This app requires MicroG’s UnifiedNlp to work which requires a ROM with signature spoofing enabled. The easiest way to get this is to use a custom ROM like Lineage with Microg or use NanoDroid with a custom ROM.

Important app for retaining functionality while degoogling your android phone.

This small restaurant in Paris’ 20th arrondissement is not exactly at a tourist hotspot – which is probably what adds to its charm. The restaurant is lovingly decorated in a vintage 60s/70s style and you really feel like you are sitting in a friends’ living room. A friend with a somewhat eccentric taste, that is, but blessed with amazing cooking skills.

We had a very, very nice dinner at Chez Elle, with wonderful French cuisine at a very fair price (the full menu is 13.50 EUR), and will definitely come here again on our next stay in Paris. It is well worth the metro trip up to Télégraphe station!

Assembly

Printer showed up without critical parts so I had to wait another week for parts to arrive. The assembly guide is online only and is mediocre. I often found myself putting something together then having taking if off and putting it on correctly the second time. They forgot to mention certain parts like the bltouch connector holder. Most of the parts are labeled or obvious but many you have to compare against assembly instructions to figure it out. The printer is not designed for easy assembly. You will have to the frame together and continue working around tightening, loosening, adjusting until you get it square. I also had a lot of issues aligning the lead screws so that I had to remove the x gantry and run the lead screw nuts up and down while adjusting. The instructions had fan mounts for a different fan type so I had to go to the discord to get the proper ones that weren’t exactly right, had to stack 2 for clearance to carriage. The wiring is laid out with 2 pictures of a good looking layout and no detailed instructions. A 3D PDF model is available but not really useful as small parts are missing and it’s hard to manage all the assemblies so you can see what you want. There is support through Discord that typically has 1 or 2 of the main guys that can be very helpful and they are available a lot.

Software

They suggest MatterControl for host/slicing. MatterControl has unfixed bugs on Linux that made it unusable for me. I’ve been using PrintRun for host software and Slic3r PE for slicing which have been working fine.

Design

Design is simplistic and leaves options open for upgrading over time. The frame is rock solid. Control is through a RAMBO 1.3 board with configured Marlin 1.1 supplied. Motors are sized properly to move the heavy axes. The details is where everything goes downhill. The x idler mount is poorly designed and has come loose several times leading to failed prints and failed homing that nearly took out the bed. Bed mounting is not solid, making it an absolute chore to get it level and keep it level. The bltouch mount is not solid as assembled according to the instructions so it will be wildly inconsistent until you properly secure it. The extruder is simple, stiff and is designed to allow a second extruder to fit on the x carriage. The extruder is a liability because the drive gear is off by about 2.5mm from hole in the heatsink meaning the filament is forced sideways into heatsink leading to feed issues from the awkward angle and filament bending. The hotend is a e3d V6 and works great. The printer came with 2 40mm axial fans for print fans which are the absolute wrong choice. The printer needs directed cooling by the nozzle to print properly. The confusing part is that they used to provide blower fans and .stls for fan shrouds that worked fine and are what I ended up using.

Printing

I had tons of printing problems. The core issue is that they supplied axial fans and no base profile. The axial fans would not provide enough cooling or would cause thermal shutdowns by overpowering the bed or hotend heaters. I ended up having to buy blower fans from them and print fan shrouds from stls they provided. You’re supposed to print the fan mounts by somehow macgyvering the fans onto the axis using zipties so you can print the cable chain and fan mounts. The lack of wiring instructions lead to wires coming loose during printing causing further printer shutdowns.

Once everything is properly setup, you can get some really nice prints. The extrusion is very consistent and motion is rock solid.

Verdict

Printer has a lot good components and upgradability, but the missteps on the small things make this more of a project than a printer.

La Hierba Luisa serves all vegan traditional starters, main courses and desserts. The tastes are good and expressive, if you want something outside of boring fast food. The food is not fast in literal sense either, if you are in a hurry. As you might expect the presentation is also quite good outside of the taste. We had only time to eat here twice, which is not nearly enough to go through the whole menu, there are always daily specials outside of the menu of about 10 main courses and 10 starters and desserts.

You can get good service in English here and the menu has English descriptions.