YES I know you were wondering why Sigmund Freud never got a Nobel prize, and now the Times Literary Supplement has the explanation [though not freely available online, as far as I can see].
It wasn’t for want of friends. Freud was first nominated for a Nobel prize in medicine in 1915; and each year from 1917-1920 (professors and past laureates can nominate); and seven times between 1927 and 1938. In 1936 Romain Rolland nominated him for a literature prize as a way round the refusal of the medicine committee. The Academy replied that Freud
works mechanically and with no deep critical analysis to simplify the ferment of dreams to an extremely simple symbolism, masculine and feminine sexual organs … Anything at all can be interpreted in this manner, but the method is rather too comfortable, and it cannot be denied that the harvest is dull and uninteresting.
As for the medicine committee, its assessor found (in 1929) that
Freud’s complete doctrine of psychoanalysis, such as it is at present, is to a large extent a hypothetical doctrine that has been adopted in a fanatical manner by his supporters, almost as a religious belief. It is my opinion that the doctrine cannot withstand proper scientific examination.
With long hindsight we might find ourselves agreeing, reluctantly, that the committee was in fact right. But still, to have given Freud a prize would have been an admirable moment of weakness.
