Could you fill in the blanks for those of us who instinctually do not like Freud — who sense in Freud something that is almost anti-surrealistic, that is, a reaction against French literature altogether?

Reading Freud is like reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; they are investigative sleuths, following a trail like a dog with a bone. In his writing Freud is a detective novelist, moving inductively through various examples to create his argument, developing the inevitable logic of his conclusions. Recently Freud has been under attack for fictionalizing his research, primarily by Jeffrey Masson (The Assault on Truth), while the post-structuralists discredit him as a conventional white western male, utilizing his concepts such as the unconscious.

Reading Freud is like reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; they are investigative sleuths, following a trail like a dog with a bone. In his writing Freud is a detective novelist, moving inductively through various examples to create his argument, developing the inevitable logic of his conclusions.

By separating our understanding of Freud from surrealism, we avoid the antipathy of the rational against the visionary mind. Freud is anti-surrealist in logical analysis, but sympathetic with its content. What is so different from the contemporary psychiatrist who inquires about the artist’s “symptomology” ? I think the antipathy towards Freud would disappear if we accept that he is not a French writer and makes no pretense of being one. If his works require imagination, it is because they require logic of symbols. Freud cultivated a positivist understanding of his work because he wanted to popularize it. We forget that for many years he was a bohemian and lived on the fringes of intellectual respectability. He was interested in, and later not impressed by the Surrealists. When they visited he observed them with medical remove. In fact, his notes on Dalí show that he tried to analyze him.