In a case more remniscent of Pirandello than Freud, scholars of psychoanalysis are in a furor over an article by an eminent historian.
The historian says the article was clearly a spoof, although presented as an authentic historical document. But critics say the historian has perpetrated a scholarly fraud.
The article by Peter Gay of Yale University, author of a recent biography of Freud, was published in Harper`s magazine in 1981. It was ostensibly a review of Freud`s book ``The Interpretation of Dreams`` by an anonymous contemporary of the inventor of psychotherapy.
In introductory remarks, Gay wrote that the article was a recent discovery from an obscure Austrian medical journal, adding: ``As far as I can discover, it has been wholly overlooked in the voluminous literature on Freud and appears here in English, in my translation and with my annotations, for the first time.``
Some Freud scholars seized upon the article as a new discovery, and it has been cited in at least one scholarly article.
``A false document is like a computer virus. It gets into the literature and replicates,`` said Frank Sulloway, another Freud biographer. ``If someone published a false review of Newton`s Principia that sounded like it had been written by Leibnitz, it would be an outrage.``
Gay has drawn fire for not trying to set the record straight once he knew his article was being misread.
``The most important thing is his silence,`` said Peter Swales, a Freud historian who cited Gay`s piece in an article. ``When he realized scholars were taking it seriously, he should have made a pubic statement at once.``
Gay admitted he was aware of Swale`s mistake, but he defended his failure to correct him.
``It never occurred to me to make a public statement about the article,`` he said. ``The whole thing was lighthearted, nothing but a joke.``
Some scholars disagree.
``A spoof is immediately recognizable as such,`` said Frederick Crews, a professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. ``It abounds in signals allowing the reader to perceive it as a joke. . . .
``Nearly seven and a half years have passed since the ostensible review was published, and Gay has yet to make a public statement about it.``
Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper`s, invited Gay to write the article for the magazine`s ``Revisions`` series, in which modern writers reconsidered classics.
``One was I.F. Stone reviewing Plato as though it had just come out,``
said Lapham. ``But Gay took it a step further. He took on the persona of an earnest contemporary critic at the time, but it was just an elaboration of a device we had used before.``
Because Gay`s article followed all the conventions of the scholarly translation it purported to be, the only direct clue to its true status was
``Revisions`` at the top of the page. That clue seems to have been missed or disregarded by the scholars who took the article seriously.