# Is Freud Still Revered? Or are Most of his Theories Debunked Now? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 24, 2017, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153 "2017-04-24T17:46:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/21 "2017-04-25T23:58:29Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > I read that at first, Freud took his patients’ word that the sexual abuse had actually happened, but as more and more patients he analysed made abuse claims, he and other researchers he discussed his work with came to the conclusion that incidents of sexual abuse couldn’t possibly be happening that much. So Freud decided that what his patients were describing were fantasies of repressed childhood sexuality. > > Do you think this historical anecdote is true? Because it sounds an awful lot like what I’ve heard guys (even on this Board) say about the rate of sexual harassment claims. That they’ve never seen it happen, so it isn’t happening. More cynically, some folks say he had a choice between believing that there was an epidemic of child sexual abuse for which the perpetrators were the powerful & monied family members engaging him to “fix their kids”, or believing that these were fantasies and that the folks who had chosen or otherwise permitted his services were benign folks. It seems totally appropriate here to suggest that he may have been unaware of allowing that consideration to determine his conclusions. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/22 "2017-04-26T00:26:31Z")
I don’t know how common true Freudian analysts are now, but the mother of an old GF was one. She’s long retired and perhaps actual analysis is on the way out too, I don’t know. She was an intensely annoying woman, who, if you spilled some water while pouring a glass, would ask “what did you mean by that?” I also used to know slightly a woman who was in honest to goodness four days a week analysis, but again this was decades ago. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/23 "2017-04-26T05:00:42Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > I read that at first, Freud took his patients’ word that the sexual abuse had actually happened, but as more and more patients he analysed made abuse claims, he and other researchers he discussed his work with came to the conclusion that incidents of sexual abuse couldn’t possibly be happening that much. So Freud decided that what his patients were describing were fantasies of repressed childhood sexuality. > > Do you think this historical anecdote is true? Because it sounds an awful lot like what I’ve heard guys (even on this Board) say about the rate of sexual harassment claims. That they’ve never seen it happen, so it isn’t happening. One major proponent of that idea is Jeffrey Masson. He was running the Freud Archives until he published the idea that Freud knew the traumatized patients he was seeing were victims of childhood sexual abuse; which he initially claimed. But, accusing the upper crust of Viennese society (who could afford his services) of being child sex abusers was what could be described as a “Career Limiting Move”. So Masson’s theory, which sounds logical, is that after his initial publications Freud changed his tune and said these childhood traumas were actually “fantasies” from the subconscious mind. > [@](#): > > In 1980 Masson was appointed Projects Director of the Freud Archives, with full access to Freud’s correspondence and other unpublished papers. While perusing this material, Masson concluded that Freud might have rejected the seduction theory in order to advance the cause of psychoanalysis and to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle, after a hostile response from the renowned sex-pathologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing and the rest of the Vienna Psychiatric Society in 1896 - “an icy reception from the jackasses,” was the way Freud described it later to Fliess So basically Freud’s theory, like many “scientific” “theories” about how the human mind operated put forward in the 1800’s and early 1900’s and some cults today, were pure bullshit pulled out of the great thinkers’ minds/rectums. So there’s the 64,000-dollar question - did Freud honestly believe this crap or did he knowingly promulgate a lie to forward his own line of BS? We’ll never know for sure. Freud’s problem (or society’s) is that he put psychology on a 100-year wrong turn from which some have yet to recover. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/24 "2017-04-26T14:17:14Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > So basically Freud’s theory, like many “scientific” “theories” about how the human mind operated put forward in the 1800’s and early 1900’s and some cults today, were pure bullshit pulled out of the great thinkers’ minds/rectums. > > So there’s the 64,000-dollar question - did Freud honestly believe this crap or did he knowingly promulgate a lie to forward his own line of BS? We’ll never know for sure. Freud’s problem (or society’s) is that he put psychology on a 100-year wrong turn from which some have yet to recover. The problem with Freud is not that psychology has yet to recover but pop psychology has yet to recover. The vast majority of practicing psychologists are not doing analysis but many people continue to blame their problems and personalities on their parents and childhoods. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/25 "2017-04-26T18:55:10Z")
**Riemann** , if I may, are you a shrink of the analyst persuasion? You had a “we” upthread that I initially read as “we shrinks agree” but perhaps you meant “we [you poster and I] agree” A shrink who’s into math, my guess. Or the other way around. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/26 "2017-04-26T19:20:11Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > I think most of Freud’s ideas are untenable. But knee-jerk aversions to ideas are not the way to evaluate scientific theories. People generally have had aversions to the idea that the earth moves, that humans are distant cousins of chimpanzees and that thoughts and ideas are the result of the electrical activity of billions of brain cells. But such aversion doesn’t provide evidence one way or the other on the validity of those theories. Not a good comparison You can show me the earth moves, it’s a physical thing, it simply does it. It can be watched and measured etc, it’s demonstrable. Telling me ive some bloody repressed urge to boink my own mum is no theory, that’s some ludicrous demented nonsense, So what is my motivation here exactly? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/27 "2017-04-26T22:07:37Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > Telling me ive some bloody repressed urge to boink my own mum is no theory, that’s some ludicrous demented nonsense, So what is my motivation here exactly? How demented or ludicrous something seems has no bearing on whether it is or isn’t reality. Is the idea that there are giant rocks billions of miles away from us spinning around and floating through nothingness any less silly than the idea that there are other people living on top of the clouds, observing and interacting with us through weather powers? Via science, we’ve determined that the former is reasonable and the latter isn’t, but minus any knowledge but what a person can see growing up and living in a jungle, with no tools or contact with others, probably the latter hypothesis would seem more plausible of the two. If Freud’s hypotheses could be tested in some way, and confirmed, then they would be true regardless of how demented you might find it. Fortunately, they aren’t. But, to your average person, Freud’s theories seemed more reasonable than the theory that parents were molesting their own children. I think it’s fair to say that this theory is just as demented. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/28 "2017-04-26T23:06:17Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > . . . If Freud’s hypotheses could be tested in some way, and confirmed, then they would be true regardless of how demented you might find it. . . . That was the point of “Freudian Slips.” They actually do reveal the hidden parts of the mind. The psychoanalytic technique also has some (mild) scientific value: by asking questions and watching the response, you can begin to map out unseen structures. (I compare it to probing for a broken bone. “Does this hurt?” “No.” “Does this hurt?” “No.” "Does this – " “HOLY JESUS!” It works roughly the same way with cognitive questions and dialogue.) ---
**Author:** ![Carryon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Carryon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carryon)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/29 "2017-04-27T17:48:20Z")
Freud got so revered in part to his clientele was full of people who suffered from various conversion disorders and hysteria which were indeed helped by his methods. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/30 "2017-04-27T18:24:07Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > How demented or ludicrous something seems has no bearing on whether it is or isn’t reality. Seems? No, is. One thing you can actually show me, the other you can only lie to me about and hope if you keep doing it i will eventually buy into it. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/31 "2017-04-27T18:43:22Z")
[Honestly, Frasier. You must be the last psychiatrist on earth who hasn’t abandoned Sigmund Freud’s theories.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbyzC07HLow) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/32 "2017-04-27T21:42:02Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > Seems? > No, is. > > One thing you can actually show me, the other you can only lie to me about and hope if you keep doing it i will eventually buy into it. I can show you anything which is real, via the scientific method. I can make no guarantee that it will be reasonable and friendly. And I can guarantee you that if you insist that every hypothesis is nice and friendly, you are going to fail to investigate some realities. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/33 "2017-04-27T23:22:31Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > [Honestly, Frasier. You must be the last psychiatrist on earth who hasn’t abandoned Sigmund Freud’s theories.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbyzC07HLow) To answer this strictly factually, no, he isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/34 "2017-04-27T23:57:04Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > To answer this strictly factually, no, he isn’t. You’re mistaken, Niles is a Jungian. > **[Niles Crane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niles_Crane)** > > Niles Crane (born 1957) is a fictional character on the American sitcom Frasier, a spin-off of the television show Cheers. He was portrayed by David Hyde Pierce. Niles is the younger brother of Frasier Crane (played by Kelsey Grammer). > Pierce was hired because Frasier producers saw his headshot and commented on how much he looked like a young Grammer. Unlike Frasier, part of whose background comes from Cheers, Niles's background is established over the course of Frasier. > Pierce has said that hi... > [@](#): > > While Frasier is a Freudian, I am a Jungian. So there’ll be no blaming mother today! ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/35 "2017-04-28T23:20:38Z")
My statement is still factually correct: even if **Frasier** isn’t in any way a Freudian, he is “Not the last psychiatrist on earth who hasn’t abandoned Freud’s theories.” He isn’t a valid counterexample…but there are other psychiatrists who have not abandoned Freud’s theories, so **Frasier** can not be “the last” of them. (ETA: My statement is also satisfied by **Frasier** not being a Freudian at all.) The logic of language is weird. ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2017, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/36 "2017-05-06T18:43:32Z")
> [@](#): > > People tend to hold very strong opinions about Freud, pro or con. He had many pupils in the early 20th century; notable among them were Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, but both of them eventually broke with Freud. Though some versions of talk therapy are still used, most psychologists and psychiatrists have rejected his theories: only about 1 per cent of people in therapy are being treated using Freudian methods. Though he’s fallen out of favor in the scientific community, many of his revolutionary concepts - like the idea of the unconscious, the interpretation of dreams, and the idea of repressed feelings causing harm - have entered our culture and our literature. And even though they haven’t read his books, most people are still familiar with his concepts, like the Oedipus complex, the ego, the phallic symbol, and the Freudian slip. > W.H. Auden wrote a long poem called “In Memory of Sigmund Freud,” which captures how deeply Freud and his ideas have permeated culture. He wrote: > If some traces of the autocratic pose, the paternal strictness he distrusted, still clung to his utterance and features, it was a protective coloration for one who’d lived among enemies so long: if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, to us he is no more a person now but a whole climate. From “The Writer’s Almanac” by Garrison Keiller ---
**Author:** ![theorange](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dfb087/32.png) [@theorange](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/theorange)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2017, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/37 "2017-05-06T22:15:07Z")
Actually, quite a lot of Freud is still valid and a lot of the rest is highly thought-provoking at least, and knowledgeable thinkers on the mind either view it as such directly, or have absorbed the ideas into the mainstream body of psychological thinking. See [The Scientific Legacy of Sigmund Freud](http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy430s2001/Westen%20D%20Scientific%20Legacy%20of%20Freud%20Psych%20Bull%201998.pdf) Therapies based on psychoanalysis actually are just as effective in many cases – and may be more effective in the long-term – than other therapies: [The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-65-2-98.pdf) [Psychoanalytic Therapy Wins Backing](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/health/01psych.html) Though really the bigger issues are that a) Freudian theories have evolved quite a bit beyond Freud: he has a whole legacy of very intelligent thinkers who have taken his theories and developed and changed them, b) that what counts as scientific in one field (e.g. physics) cannot be the standard of what counts as scientific in other, far more ambiguous contexts (e.g. the mind), and c) that the humanities/literature have just as much if not more to say about the mind than “scientific” psychology and that psychoanalysis situates itself somewhere between the humanities and, say, neuroscience. The bottom line is that Freudian theories are highly sophisticated offshoots of the humanities, and the vast majority of the people who disparage it don’t actually understand the issues at stake and the complexity of the domain. The truth is that neuroscience and non-psychoanalytic psychology don’t hold a candle to psychoanalysis in its bold ambitions and insight. A great part of the way we talk and think about human nature today is derived from psychoanalysis. The dark sides of the emotions, the subterranean side of human nature, the paradoxical, incredibly strange, utterly perplexing part of the mind and emotions: only psychoanalysis among the sciences dares to go there, and it cannot be faulted for being mysterious and strange itself as a result. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/38 "2020-05-01T01:38:47Z")
Bumped, because this kinda sorta fits here, I couldn’t find a better thread for it, and I suspect it’s not worth a whole thread of its own. Is this an accurate thumbnail description of how psychotherapy works? From Alex Michaelides’s recent British thriller _The Silent Patient_: “A patient delegates his unacceptable feelings to his therapist, and she holds everything he is afraid to feel, and she feels it for him. Then, ever so slowly, she feeds his feelings back to him.” That sounds like it would place a staggering burden on the therapist, esp. one who (as I presume most do) has multiple patients. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/39 "2020-05-01T02:05:42Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > “A patient delegates his unacceptable feelings to his therapist, and she holds everything he is afraid to feel, and she feels it for him. Then, ever so slowly, she feeds his feelings back to him.” > > That sounds like it would place a staggering burden on the therapist, esp. one who (as I presume most do) has multiple patients. That describes how some therapy is done but you are making too much of this part: “…she holds everything he is afraid to feel, and she feels it for him”. She holds it by writing it down in a notebook, and feels it for him by using her experience and training to understand what he feels, it isn’t necessary for a therapist to relive the feelings of a patient. I don’t think that’s really possible. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/40 "2020-05-01T02:07:53Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > What about Jung? I know he influenced the Meyers-Briggs personality test, and that’s still widely used (though pointless). Wasn’t Jung kind of Freud 2.0? Making weird theories based on unsupported ideas that are nevertheless still influential today? If not influential on the actual practice of psychology, influential on pop culture at least? Jung is hardly anything like Freud, except in being concerned with the mind’s workings. He went off down a whole different river, in an attempt to meld mythology, spirituality, and his own inner world into a single whole vision of consciousness. His ideas have permeated western culture in quite different way – dreams as spiritual guide posts, the idea of the ‘shadow’ (the part of you that you do not admit to having, which gives it power), introversion and extraversion, all kinds of stuff like that started with Jung. Rather than an ‘unconscious’ he believed in a ‘subconscious’, which he conceived of as underlying all consciousness, like a vast mycelium under the earth. Basically he was a mystic. When I was 20 and going to art school I lived in a flat with a guy with three PhD’s who thought Jung, along with the array of his followers – Mircea Eliade, Fraser, I can’t remember them all – were really on to something. We would discuss our dreams for hours. His were always way more interesting and fantastical than mine. He’s long dead now, and I still miss him. I think Jung has fallen out of favor in the sense that his theories owed nothing to science, but then he never claimed they did. He would have said that modern psychology is reductionistic and shallow, and that people crave deeper meaning and deeper understanding, not simple fixes to problems. Probably he was wrong about that … [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153.md?page=3)