Editing Rat Man (section)

==Criticism of Freud==
[[Peter Gay]] concluded in ''[[Freud: A Life for Our Time]]'' (1988) that "apart from a handful of interesting deviations, the case history Freud published generally followed the process notes he made every night".<ref>Gay, p. 262</ref> Patrick Mahony, a psychoanalyst and professor of English at the [[University of Montreal]], has highlighted such discrepancies in his detailed study ''Freud and the Rat Man,'' published in 1986 by the [[Yale University Press]].

Dr. Mahony said Freud seems to have consistently implied that the case lasted longer than it actually did. He also said Freud claimed in a lecture to be able to guess the name of the Rat Man's girlfriend, Gisela, from an anagram, ''Glejisamen'', which the patient had invented.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|url=http://www.enotes.com/notes-upon-case-obsessional-neurosis-rat-man-reference/notes-upon-case-obsessional-neurosis-rat-man |first1=Patrick |last1=Mahoney |title=Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis (Rat Man) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120728005713/http://www.enotes.com:80/notes-upon-case-obsessional-neurosis-rat-man-reference/notes-upon-case-obsessional-neurosis-rat-man |archive-date=2012-07-28 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Actually, the notes show Freud had learned her name first, and then used it to deduce the meaning of the anagram,<ref>{{cite news
|author=DANIEL GOLEMAN
|title=As a Therapist, Freud Fell Short, Scholars Find
|date=6 March 1990
|work=[[New York Times]]
|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE6DD133AF935A35750C0A966958260&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=4
|access-date=8 August 2008
}}</ref> although in the actual case study Freud merely states that "when he told it to me, I could not help noticing that the word was in fact an anagram of the name of his lady".<ref>Freud, p. 105</ref>

Critics have objected to Freud's downplaying of the role of the Rat Man's mother, and for several deviations on his part from what later became standard psychoanalytic practice.<ref>Gay, p. 263 and p. 266-7</ref>

===Efficacy of the treatment===
Mahoney accepted that Freud obtained a degree of success in restoring his patient to functional life, though he considered Freud exaggerated the extent of this in his case study.<ref name="auto"/> Others have suggested that by concentrating on building rapport with his patient, at the expense of analyzing the [[negative transference]], Freud merely achieved a temporary transference cure.<ref>Michael Thompson, ''The Truth about Freud's Technique'' (1995) p. 239</ref> Lacan for his part concluded that although he did not "regard the Rat Man as a case that Freud cured", in it "Freud made the fundamental discoveries, which we are still living off, concerning the dynamics and structure of obsessional neurosis".<ref>J. Lacan, ''Écrits: A Selection'' (1997) p. 237-8</ref>

In a letter Freud wrote to [[Jung]], shortly after publication of the case study, he claimed of the Rat Man that "he is facing life with courage and ability. The one point that still gives him trouble ([[Father complex|father-complex]] and transference) has shown up clearly in my conversations with this intelligent and grateful man"<ref>McGuire, W: ''The Freud/Jung Letters'', page 255. Princeton University Press, 1974.</ref> – a not insignificant reservation. But while Freud in the case-history had certainly claimed that "the patient's rat delirium had disappeared",<ref>Freud, p. 100</ref> he had also pointed out the limited time and depth of the analysis: "The patient recovered, and his ordinary life began to assert its claims...which were incompatible with a continuation of the treatment".<ref name="auto1"/>

As the average length of time expected of an analysis increased from months to years over the 20th century,<ref>Janet Malcolm, ''Psychoanalysis'' (1989) p. 151</ref> so too the success of the Rat Man's case has perhaps come to resemble rather the symptomatic relief of [[brief psychotherapy]] or [[Michael Balint#Focal psychotherapy|focal psychotherapy]], more than the achievement of a full psychoanalysis.<ref>Gay, p. 245</ref>