A good example of the limits of historical writing when dealing with religious subjects is the recently published "Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith." The author, Robert D. Anderson, is a self-described disaffected church member with an M.D. and some psychoanalytic training. It has become increasingly obvious over the years that Sigmund Freud was not really a scientist at all, but a literary critic with a highly idiosyncratic system of thought. Anderson is a true Freudian believer. He ransacks the Book of Mormon for rather far-fetched parallels to Smith's history in an attempt to prove Smith wrote the book and left traces of his "psychobiography" in it. This might be seen as an attempt to shore up Fawn Brodie's increasingly obsolete biography of the prophet, but Anderson goes even farther. He says Smith was not just wrong and deluded but actively, malignantly evil. And his fate was sealed by the age of 4 by his unnurturing mother.

This book well illustrates why so many dislike so much this particular form of depth psychology. Here is the grinding determinism, the reduction of individual personalities to arid "case studies", the smugly arrogant naturalism that is blind to the spiritual possibilities of life. Anderson twists some of the most inspiring chapters in the Book of Mormon to illustrate his thesis, wrenching them wholly out of context. He ignores the abundant evidence of Smith's genuine religious feeling. And near the end of his book, in a scarcely convincing show of humility, he throws in a single paragraph about the failures of Freudian theory: its disastrous diagnoses of such illnesses as scizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. These misdiagnoses caused untold unecessary guilt, grief, and expense to families fooled by the psychoanalytic method (these illnesses are better treated, at least in part, by medication.) After 200 pages of intricate argument, Anderson grudgingly concedes he might be entirely mistaken.

Dr. Anderson is a man in his '60's; a blurb on the back cover is from Brigham D. Madsen, a man in his '80's. It doesn't appear to have occured to Signature Books the psychoanalysis is not the freshest, most cutting-edge approach to Mormon studies. I eagerly await Richard Bushman's new biography of Joseph Smith, which he is now writing. It will help put the memory of Anderson's book behind me.

R.W. Rasband
Heber City, UT
rrasband@yahoo.com