Webster endorses Gilbert Ryle's arguments against mentalist philosophies in The Concept of Mind (1949), and criticizes many other authors for their treatment of Freud and psychoanalysis.
[1] He describes psychoanalysis as "perhaps the most complex and successful" pseudoscience in history,[2] and Freud as an impostor who sought to found a false religion.
He suggests that the acclaim the book received shows the persistence of the Freud legend, noting that with exceptions such as Peter Swales,[7] many reviewers praised it, especially in Britain.
Webster compared the former psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's The Assault on Truth (1984) to E. M. Thornton's The Freudian Fallacy (1983), finding both authors hostile towards Freud and psychoanalysis.
Webster blamed Masson for encouraging the spread of the recovered memory movement by implying that most or all serious cases of neurosis are caused by child sexual abuse, that orthodox psychoanalysts were collectively engaged in a massive denial of this fact, and that an equally massive collective effort to retrieve painful memories of incest was required.
[16] The book was also reviewed by Brenda Grazis in Booklist,[17] the biographer Paul Ferris in The Spectator,[18] the psychologist Stuart Sutherland in The Times Higher Education Supplement,[19] R. H. Balsam in Choice,[20] the psychiatrist Bob Johnson in New Scientist,[21] Kate Chisholm in TES,[22] Sarah Boxer in The New York Times Book Review,[23] and discussed by the journalist Bob Woffinden in The Guardian.
[13] Lodge considered the book "exceptionally searching, lucid, and well-argued", as well as "intellectually exciting" and "challenging", and noted that it was "linked to an ambitious project for a true science of human nature".
He accepted Webster's argument that the growth of the psychoanalytic movement corresponds closely to the historical development of religions, but wrote that this does not necessarily discredit psychoanalysis.
[14] Twiggs described the book as readable, and wrote that it presented an effective argument and rivaled the psychiatrist Henri Ellenberger's The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970).
He wrote that Webster made "the most savage attack ever mounted on Freud and psychoanalysis", and offered a confused and eclectic attempt to develop a general theory of human nature.
[25] Swales wrote that while the book was advertised on its jacket as a comprehensive biography, Webster did not expand "factual knowledge of Freud's life and work", but rather engaged in a "relentless polemic" that was "flawed in its simplifications" but "lethal in its total impact."
He noted that Webster, despite not having a background in medicine, argued that Breuer's patient Anna O. suffered from "a severe neurological disorder" and that "its array of florid symptoms underwent spontaneous remission one after another."
He considered Webster, following Frank Sulloway, correct to emphasize that the development of Freud's theories after 1896 was mainly inspired by assumptions drawn from contemporary biology.
Decker accepted that some of Webster's objections to Freud "had some substance", but in her view he destroyed the validity of these points by taking them to extremes.
She considered Webster naive or ignorant to deny that "emotions can produce bodily phenomena", and criticized his discussion of Breuer's treatment of his patient Anna O.