those courses is wrong. For example, the lead article in the Octoberrn1992 issue of the American Psychologist begins by noting,rn”Many today are disappointed in the progress that psychologyrnhas made in this century.” The author, Frank Schmidt, notesrnthat the argument is whether this “slow” progress is due to arnfaulty philosophy of science or to behaviorism, the dominantrnepistemology in academic psychology. He argues that the basicrnstatistical assumption used in this overwhelmingly statisticalrn”science,” the test of significance, is incorrect and systematicallyrnbiases researchers to reach the wrong conclusions. Arngreat many psychologists agree with him.rnhi fact, who now believes that the social sciences have beenrnright, or have made valuable contributions to our society, overrnthe past half century, or the past century for that matter? Ourrn”elite” universities themselves are now overflowing with bright,rnvoung social “scientists” who adamantly insist that almost all ofrnthe dominant perspectives of these disciplines have been profoundlyrn(or even absolutely) wrong. They march under differentrnbanners and labels—public choice economists, postmodernists,rnfeminists, nco-Marxists, and on arrd on—but therngeneral message is that what has been is radically wrong.rnThe primary problem is mythical thinking. Behaviorists,rnsuch as B.F. Skinner, did not lead psychology down a path ofrnsterilitv, irrelevance, and mistake because they were dishonestrnor lazy. Keynes did not lead us to economic stagnation, soaringrndebt, and eventual crisis because he wanted to destroyrncapitalism or Western civilization. lie did so because he wasrnemotionally committed to the great myths of rationalism, scientism,rnmodernism, and socialism and because these helped tornlead him astray. He was empirically wrong about what herncalled “oversaving” and the “multiplier effect” of governmentrnspending. And the great majority of other social scientists whornhave misled and miseducated us did so because they werernwrong, methodologically wrong, because their passions andrnconvictions inspired mythical thinking in their choices ofrnmethods.rnSigmund Freud is certainly one of the most influential 20thcenturyrnthinkers who has led us astray and whose ideas have distortedrnand destroyed millions of lives. After 40 years of analyzingrnhis work and of not knowing what to think about hisrnbasic ideas, I have become increasingly convinced that Freudrnwas the victim of his own famous analytic method. First,rnFreud probably had patients who had very vague and garbledrnmemories of their early childhoods, and a small number ofrnthem may have been physically attacked or sexually abused.rnThose two factors set him up for the biggest mistake he made.rnAs Peter Gay has argued in great detail, Freud relied on his ownrnself-analysis to determine what really happened in early childhood.rnHis own memories led him to believe that at the age ofrnfour he had experienced full-blown (adult?) lust for his motherrnwhen he saw her nude. There may be extremely rare childrenrnwho experience such extremely premature adolescence, asrnendocrinologists and neurologists would call it today. Butrneven if Freud fit such a pattern, which is exceedingly unlikely,rnit would be a mistake to conclude that all other human beingsrnfit the same pattern.rnMy best guess of what happened is that Freud’s memory ofrnearly childhood excitement over nudity, which is very commonrnin our very clothed society, led him to mistake fascinationrnwith the forbidden for fully developed sexual lust. Once he hadrnthat mistaken clue, he then made use of his biological preconceptionrnabout human nature to conclude that everyone elsernwould have the same experience. He used that clue to “interpret”rnwhat his patients told him. They were strongly biased tornbelieve that what the Herr Doktor told them was true. In short,rnthey were biased by his method and the situation in which hernapplied it—the medical situation, in which doctors are perceivedrnto hold god-like power.rnThe overall evidence indicates that Freud was a devoted Scientistrn(with a capital “S”), an Expert who believed that Sciencernprovides us with the Absolute Truth. Like almost all modernistrnsocial scientists, he implicitly believed the Myth of AbsoluternScience and the Myth of the Fxpert embodied in the idea ofrn”The Genius.” In this modernist myth. Science is a mysteryrnthat produces miracles—a secularized religion, remarkablyrnlike Judaism or Ghristianity—that produces Absolute Truthsrndiscovered and handed down to common people by Expertsrn(Prophets) who are inspired by the mysterious grace of Geniusrn(the Word of God). The Scientist-Expert imposes the Truthrnupon reluctant sinners.rnFrank Sulloway and others have shown this remarkable parallelrnbetween the tenets of Freud and the ideas of the Jewishrnand Christian prophets and heros. Peter Drucker recentlyrnpointed out that this same mystique of the Expert is the cornerstonernof the social science myths of Marxism, scientificrnmanagement, Keynesianism, and social planning in general.rnGommon sense tells us that everyone plans rationally, but thernSocial Planner asserts that only he is a social science Expertrnwho can prophesy the future and plan everybody’s life to makerneverybody happy in heaven on earth.rnGommon sense would lead us to expect that Sigmund Freudrnwas basically ignorant about sex and most other everydayrnthings, simply because he lived such a limited, constrained life.rnAnyone interested in pursuing this matter should look at thernstark contrast between Freud’s ignorance of sexuality, especiallyrnof the deviant kind his patients were reporting, and HavelockrnEllis’s very real knowledge based on a wide range of experience,rnboth personal and secondary, through the lives of his friendsrnand contacts. Freud, however, played the Scientist-Expertrnrole superbly, while Havelock Ellis had nothing on his side butrnthe humble methods of empiricism and simple, problematicrntruth. Freud became the Genius of Sexuality in the mass mediarnand the academic world, thereby condemning tens of millionsrnof the best and brightest in our Western nations to somernof the most bizarre myths in history.rnStrictly speaking, Freud is more an example of medicalrnmyths than of social science myths. Freud always remainedrngrounded in the biologistic ideas of I9th-eenturyrnmedicine (before behavioral biology, ethology, and the wholerncomplex of ideas now known as “holistic medicine”). The truernScientific Geniuses of the social science of sex were MargaretrnMead and Alfred Kinsey. Mead, of course, was the great pioneerrnin the mass media of cultural relativism (whereas Freudrnwas a rigid biological determinist). She was actually followingrnfirmly in the footsteps of her teachers, especially of Franz Boasrnand Ruth Benedict, but the media saw her as the Genius whornwent to the faraway mountain (Samoa) and brought back therndivine book of sexual relativism—Coming of Age in Samoa—rnwhich students are destined to read as the modernist bible ofrncasual sex in introductory courses in utopianism at Harvard andrnelsewhere.rnMead studied a small group of Samoan girls in a missionaryrnschool, was told by them that they made love under the palmsrnSEPTEMBER 1993/17rnrnrn