# Is Freud Still Revered?  Or are Most of his Theories Debunked Now?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153>\
**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:** 3\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2020, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/61 "2020-05-07T18:43:19Z")

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> [@RickJay](#):
>
> Freud started psychoanalysis from basically nothing. Of course most of what he believed was nonsense.

You should hear what he has to say about you.

Seriously though, how do you make history by starting with nothing and believing mostly nonsense? Oh yeah, genius.

Might it be a little more accurate to say that his insights were still a work in progress during his lifetime? His writing never lacked “sense”. He changed the sense of being human.

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**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2020, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/62 "2020-05-07T18:58:42Z")

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> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#):
>
> He could be a damn good writer. We studied **Three Case Histories** in a fascinating university literature course.

I was utterly fascinated by his book _Moses and Monotheism_, although I take his conclusions with a grain of salt.

Biblical scholar Elias Auerbach, remarking on Freud’s assertion that the historical Moses must have been Egyptian, not Jewish, because he bore an Egyptian name\*, said “Then what are we to make of someone with the non-Jewish name “Sigmund Freud”?”

\*_-mose_ signifies “Child of” in Egyptian naming, and is always suffixed to the name of a god. the significance is muddied in our naming of the Pharaohs, since we get them by way of the Greeks, but “Thoth-mose” becomes “Thothmes” in our histories, “Ra-mose” becomes “Rameses”, and so on. The implication is that Moses completely dropped the Theo- part of his Theophoros name, thereby dropping his commitment to polytheism as well.

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**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2020, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-freud-still-revered-or-are-most-of-his-theories-debunked-now/785153/63 "2020-05-07T21:25:53Z")

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> [@John\_DiFool](#):
>
> Anecdote is not data disclaimer, but when I was 16 I had [Jung’s dream of the “Maneater”](http://jungcurrents.com/carl-jungs-first-dream-the-man-eater/)–100 years later and 100 miles north of where he had it in Switzerland-we were on vacation in Germany and the jet lag let this…thing…into my dream world. It was exactly as he described it-a massive living phallus in an underground cavern. I was as terrified as fuck as he was–can’t imagine dreaming of it at age 4. Note I only found out about his dream years later-at that time I had only heard of Jung when he was name-dropped in Woody Allen movies.

What if it had been a giant cigar?

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