Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience

Book excerpt: In the early 1970s, Cioffi demonstrated that Freud falsified the account of his discovery of the Oedipus complex - an account that had gone unquestioned until that time. Moreover, Cioffi showed that this misrepresentation was necessary to the propagation of the Oedipus theory. The author subsequently revealed Freud's falsifications in retracting his theory of infantile seduction, a revelation that has been often cited in recent books and scholarly journals.