caption death_date influenced birth_place subject influences nationality notableworks birth_date image article_title education name occupation
richard webster , 2009 24 june 2011 jonathan gathorne-hardy newington , kent blasphemy allegations , free speech , sigmund freud , abuse karen armstrong , norman cohn , gilbert ryle united kingdom '' why freud was wrong '' a brief history of blasphemy '' , '' 17 december 1950 richard_webster , _ british_author , _ november_2009 . jpg richard webster -lrb- british author -rrb-
 university of east anglia richard webster author
richard webster -lrb- british author -rrb-

richard webster -lrb- 17 december 1950 -- 24 june 2011 -rrb- was a british cultural historian , the author of five published books , dealing with subjects such as the controversy over salman rushdie 's novel `` the satanic verses '' , sigmund freud and psychoanalysis , and the investigation of sexual abuse in britain .
born in newington , kent , webster studied english literature at the university of east anglia and lived in oxford , england .
he became interested in the problem of false allegations partly due to reading the work of norman cohn .
webster 's `` a brief history of blasphemy '' tries to understand the muslim response to `` the satanic verses '' and argues against unrestricted freedom of speech .
the book was praised by rowan williams , the archbishop of canterbury .
webster may be best remembered for his subsequent book `` why freud was wrong '' , which argues that freud became a kind of messiah and that psychoanalysis is a disguised continuation of the judaeo-christian tradition .
his `` the secret of bryn estyn : the making of a modern witch hunt '' , which tells the story of a care home for adolescent boys that became the focus of press revelations and a police investigation for child abuse that spread across a number of residential homes in north wales , was shortlisted for the orwell prize .
