Richard Webster (author)

Richard Webster (born 1950) is a Freud scholar and cultural historian. He is the author of five books. Webster studied English literature at the University of East Anglia and lives in Oxford, England. In 1985, Webster helped start The Orwell Bookshop in Southwold.

Webster's first book, "A Brief History of Blasphemy: Liberalism, Censorship and the Satanic Verses", discussed the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses". It drew on work by writer Karen Armstrong and historian Norman Cohn. Webster deplored the death sentence against Rushdie, but wrote that "...ever since the Rushdie affair started there is one thing I have feared more than the bombs of Islamic fundamentalists. It is the harm that can be done by the machine-gun bullets of liberal self-righteousness." cite book |first=Richard. |last=Webster |year=1990 |title=A Brief History of Blasphemy |publisher=The Orwell Press |location=Southwold |id= ISBN 0 9515922 0 3]

Webster's second book was "Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis". Most of the book was divided into three main sections: "The Creation of a Pseudo-Science", "The Church and the Psychoanalytic Gospel", and "Psychoanalysis, Science and the Future". These were preceded by "A Note to the Reader", an Introduction "The Legacy of Freud", and a Prologue "Images, Myths and Legends". In "A Note to the Reader", Webster wrote that his ultimate goal was, "...to interpret his [Freud's] beliefs and his personality in order that we may better understand our own culture, our own history, and indeed, our own psychology. It is to this "constructive" attempt to analyse the nature and sources of Freud's mistakes that my title primarily refers." Webster maintained in the Prologue, that, "...perhaps the clearest evidence that Freud did not understand us is the fact that we do not understand Freud." [cite book |first=Richard. |last=Webster |year=1995 |title=Why Freud Was Wrong |publisher=Basic Books |location=New York |id= ISBN 0-465-09128-8 ]

Webster's third book, "The Great Children's Home Panic", was about police investigation of sexual abuse in Britain.

Webster's fourth book, "Freud", was a short critical discussion of Freud written for The Great Philosophers series edited by Ray Monk and Frederic Raphael.

Webster's fifth book, "The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch Hunt" (2005), was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. It discussed the case of Bryn Estyn, a care home for adolescent boys which, in the 1990s, became the focus of press revelations and a police investigation for child abuse that spread across a number of residential homes in North Wales.

Webster is currently working on "a study of guilt, shame and the role played by disgust in human evolution and human culture." [ [http://www.richardwebster.net/index.html Richard Webster: sceptical essays ] ]

Book reviews

* Review by "Why Freud Was Wrong" by Roger Elliott [http://www.uncommon-knowledge.co.uk/book_review/freud-wrong.html]
* Review of "Why Freud Was Wrong" by Raymond Tallis [http://www.human-nature.com/freud/tallis.html]

Bibliography

* "A Brief History of Blasphemy: Liberalism, Censorship and 'The Satanic Verses"', The Orwell Press, 1990. ISBN 0 9515922 0 3
* "Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis", Fontana Press, 1996. ISBN 0-0063-8428-5
* "The Great Children's Home Panic", The Orwell Press, 1998. ISBN 0 9515922 2 X
* "Freud", Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003. ISBN 0-2978-2985-8
* "The Secret of Bryn Estyn", The Orwell Press, 2005. ISBN 0 9515922 4 6

Notes

External links

* [http://www.richardwebster-net.blogspot.com/ Blog]
* [http://www.richardwebster.net/index.html Home page]