Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire The causes and mechanisms of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire are a historical theme that was introduced by historian Edward Gibbon in his 1776 book "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". He started an ongoing historiographical discussion about what caused the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the reduced power of the remaining Eastern Empire, in the 4th–5th centuries. Gibbon was not the first to speculate on why the Empire collapsed, but he was the first to give a well-researched and well-referenced account.
Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985; second edition 2004) is a book by the psychologist Hans Eysenck, in which the author criticizes Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, which he argues is unscientific. The second edition has a preface by his widow, Sybil Eysenck. The book received both positive and negative reviews. Eysenck has been criticized for his discussion of Josef Breuer's treatment of his patient Anna O., whom Eysenck argues suffered from tuberculous meningitis. Eysenck argues that psychoanalysis is unscientific and that its theories are based on no legitimate base of observation