THE TELEGRAPH: Couch wars have broken out among France's leading psychiatrists after a top philosopher branded Sigmund Freud a perverse, anti-Semitic fraud who failed to cure a single patient.
It is stepping on hallowed ground to criticise Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, in a country where top analysts and philosophers are still treated as stars.
But Michel Onfray has accused the champion of the unconscious mind of lying about the success of his treatment and being a misogynist homophobe obsessed with sexual abuse.
He goes on to attack the whole exercise of psychoanalysis as the last untouchable religion revered by "stars and footballers."
"Who else would still have the time to pay in cash to lie on a couch twice a week before some guy who's half-asleep?," Mr Onfray said as his controversial book Twilight of an Idol, the Freudian Fabrication was published.
French psychoanalysts' response was immediate and fierce.
Leading the charge was Elisabeth Roudinesco, who blasted his book as "a rag stuffed full of errors and shot through with rumours".
Mr Onfray claims that Freud claims to have cured 18 patients as proof that his theories could be successfully applied. On closer inspection, however, documents prove this to be a total fallacy, he contends. >>> Henry Samuel in Paris | Thursday, April 15, 2010
