Following Freud

In Frederick Crews's splendid article (THES, March 3) dealing with the responses to his attack on Freud, he comments that his original essay continues to attract more attention than all of his previous writings combined.

I suspect Professor Crews is being unduly modest - surely his The Pooh Perplex (Arthur Barker, 1963) containing the critique "A. A. Milne's Honey-Ballon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtub complex" did not go unnoticed by the Freudians? In that essay ("written" by Karl Anschauung, MD) is the statement "The present disadvantage of A. A. Milne's absence from my office, will not hamper us if we in mind keep the realisation, that works of art are under conditions of relaxed superego censorship written, thus (also) yielding formerly repressed patterns almost as successfully, as private analytical sessions, lacking however the stimulating incentives of transference and very high fees". We should be grateful to Professor Crew for his consistent debunking of Freudian psychoanalysis over the past 30 years.

TERRY BENNETT

Department of Physiology and Pharmacology

Queen's Medical Centre

Nottingham