SOURCE: Girgus, Sam B. “Oedipus Texts: Freud, Feminism and American Studies.” American Quarterly 43, no. 2 (June 1991): 347–57.

In the following excerpt, Girgus offers a positive assessment of Reading Freud.

It is an apocryphal story, filled with subtle ironies and nuances for the student of Freud. With the Statue of Liberty in view as their ship approaches New York, Freud turns to Jung and says: “They don't realize we're bringing them the plague.”¹ Ironically, Freud himself was, in a sense, plagued by the reception of his work and ideas in America. Psychoanalysis found in the United States an environment that proved conducive to its growth in ways that Freud considered disturbing. Not just writers, artists, and academics became followers, but the general public also was receptive to popularized and simplistic notions of Freud's insights into the relationships among sexuality, repression, and culture. Equally distressing to Freud, American medicine accelerated the trend...