Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays

True skepticism is an attitude of constant questioning, a mode of thinking Frederick Crews held so dear he applied it to Freudian psychoanalytic theory, an intellectual tradition he initially believed to be empirically sound. But as his examination of the logical structure and institutional history of psychoanalysis revealed ever more cracks in the field's empirical framework, Crews broke with Freudian theory, eventually labeling it the very model of a modern pseudoscience.

This collection…