1953 March 7

“No Freud in Cleveland!” Purity Crusade Removes Books by Famed Psychologist

 

Books by the pioneering psychologist Sigmund Freud, it was reported on this day, had disappeared from the shelves of Cleveland, Ohio, bookstores as a result of a local “purity” crusade.

Robert Klein, owner of the largest local magazine and book dealer, said that Freud’s book, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, had been removed because of a chapter on sex. Klein, however, complained that “it is difficult to tell what the law means by obscenity.”

Novels by such authors as John Steinbeck, Mickey Spillane, and Somerset Maugham had also disappeared from bookstores.

Go to the Banned Book Week website: http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/

Banned Book Week; authors speak out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKE7k5Qjobw

Learn more about censorship in America: Marjorie Heins, Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America’s Censorship Wars (1993)

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