Editing Psychoanalysis (section)

====Critics of abuse thesis and Freud in general====
In the later part of the 20th century, several Freud researchers questioned the author's perception that his patients had informed him of childhood sexual abuse. Some of them argued that Freud had imposed his preconceived view on his patients, while others raised the suspicion of conscious forgery.<ref>Cioffi, F. 1998 [1973]. "Was Freud a Liar?" Pp. 199–204 in ''Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience''. [[Open Court Publishing Company|Open Court]].</ref><ref>Schimek, J. G. 1987. "Fact and Fantasy in the Seduction Theory: A Historical Review." ''[[Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association]]'' 35:937–65.</ref><ref>Esterson, Allen. 1998. "Jeffrey Masson and Freud's seduction theory: A new fable based on old myths (synopsis in Human Nature Review)." ''[[History of the Human Sciences]]'' 11(1):1–21. {{doi|10.1177/095269519801100101}}.</ref>

These are two different arguments. The latter tries to prove that Freud deliberately lied in order to make the allegedly unfounded psychoanalysis appear as a legitimate science; the former assumes an unknowingly committed act (countertransference). Freud, aware of his retraction of the abuse thesis, replied at various places in his work in the same way to both types of argument: That natural science is a process based on [[trial and error]]. A slow but sure becoming, in which it is impossible to have precisely defined concepts from the outset, respectively phenomena that from now on have been clarified without any gaps and contradictions. "Indeed, even physics would have missed out on its entire development if it had been forced to wait until its concepts of matter, energy, gravity and others reached the desirable clarity and precision."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Gesammelte Werke. Bd. 14. Selbstdarstellung |pages=84–85}}</ref>

The psychologist [[Frank Sulloway]] points out in his book ''Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend'' that the theories and hypotheses of psychoanalysis are anchored in the findings of contemporary biology. He mentions the profound influence of [[Charles Darwin]]'s theory of evolution on Freud and quotes this sense from the writings of [[Ernst Haeckel|Haeckel]], [[Wilhelm Fliess]], [[Richard von Krafft-Ebing|Krafft-Ebing]] and [[Havelock Ellis]].<ref name="Borch-Jacobsen 2012" />{{Rp|30}}