Freud was an arrogant, self-centered prick who believed that he had made a great discovery (psycho-analysis).However, after 100years of this, there is very little proof that psychoanlysis cures anything. Freud did no formalresearch, and alaienated many of his coworkers…lokk at the treatment he meted out to C.G. Jung for example. My takeon freud: a man who started out OK, but became increasingly ego driven, to the point where he couldn’t get out ofhis own bullshit. He did make some valid observations, but in the main, his explanations for human behavior arevery weird.
Newton was an arrogant, self-centred prick, too, a liar and cheat, and 90% of everything he did was mystical, non-scientific bunk. It isn’t easy to be the guy who basically invents an entire field of study.
Freud was a ignorant egoist who thought he was a genius.
Freud, as it turns out, was a quack.
Freud’s mistaken ideas caused unnecessary misery and unthinkable pain for millions of mentally disturbed people for almost one hundred years.
Freud was only ignorant. The many thousands who grew wealthy and became well respected by practicing and promoting the non-productive methods of psychoanalysis were, and are, charlatans and thieves.
I wonder how long it will take for people to recognize and discard the modern equivalents of Freudian psychology.
Probably another hundred years…
YourOldBuddy:
It makes you feel better (which is the goal of psychotherapeutic treatment), but it doesn’t work? I don’t get ya.
No? Have you ever heard of Google? Try typing in “psychotherapy outcome studies” or “psychotherapy research” and take a look at what pops up. Here’s a small sampling:
Here are a couple of specific studies on therapeutic outcome:
and:
Here are a couple of abstracts of meta-studies drawn from this page:
Here’s an interesting article on using the MMPI to chart change in character structure that result from long-term psychotherapeutic treatment:
Now, regarding these examples, some caveats are in order:
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There are also numerous studies that reveal psychotherapy to be ineffective, even detrimental, to a patient’s health.
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All studies, both positive and negative, suffer from profound methodological difficulties (although I must admit, I found the MMPI paper pretty compelling at first glance).
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This area of research is one of the most controversial and highly politicized fields I’ve ever encountered. The profoundly underdetermined nature of the evidence, along with methodological (and ethical) limitations imposed by the subject matter, allow for a broad range of interpretation; and, in addition, there’s a gigantic market at stake. All research in this field must be treated as tentative, at best.
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Having said that, there is a growing consensus among researchers that psychotherapy, including psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, are effective treatment choices, especially for patients suffering from “emotional” disorders (such as clinical depression).
Freud gets a bad rap because his most talked about theories are the dopeyest ones. No doubt he was strangely obsessed with crapping and oral sex, but he also brought about a paradigm shift in our perception of human consciousness. Freud popularized the concept of the subconscious, the idea that people’s actions are sometimes driven by motivations they aren’t completely aware of. Before Freud, it was assumed that people understood themselves. And much of our modern vocabulary for discussing human behavior, like denial and * rationalization*, stems from Freud’s theories.
Freud also developed a nodal model for the brain where nodes represent concepts and activated nodes bleed energy to connected nodes, which are thematically related. These days nodal brain models and ‘spreading activation’ are pretty much standbys of cognitive science, but Freud had the idea before nerve cells and action potentials were even dreamed of.
Sure, Freud was an egomaniac and perhaps even a con man and a pervert. Genius isn’t always pretty. Pythagoras thought beans had souls, fer chrissake.
When people call others “quacks” or such, it only detracts from their own veracity.
I read all of Freud’s books except the last one. I didn’t read it because I found an old newspaper clipping of an interview of him.
Freud was very popular, and the “in” crowd of socialites would often quote and discuss his work at their parties. They were called Freudians. Sometimes these discussions would make the local newspapers, or radio, because of the controversial nature of Freud’s theories.
The newspaper reporter, in the clipping, asked Dr. Freud what he thought of the “Freudians” who quoted his works in the media. Freud replied: “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar; me, I am not a Freudian, and I would rather be quoted by my critics, than by my friends, because they quote me more accurately; however, these ideas and concepts of mine are merely the tools of my trade, it is really love that heals.”
No need to read the last one after that.
Love
Leroy
Untreated is not the same as non-psychotherapy. Any placebo effect or just human contact has healing effects.
If you happen to remember where the clipping was from, then I’m sure the historian Peter Gay, author of Freud: A Life For Our Time, would be fascinated. From here regarding just the plain vanilla “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”:
And the American Psychoanalytic Society would definitely be interested:
Freud has been misunderstood for ages. It is a ridiculous irony that those who call Freud an “egotist” would probably not have that word to slander him with, were it not for Freud’s huge impact on modern society. Or was it that Freud was “unconsciously” sex-crazed?
Popular belief regarding Freud has always been inaccurate because most people didn’t understand his theories, nor did they read his works. A modern psychoanalyst would probably groan if you brought up penis envy. In fact, don’t ask most psychologists about Freud - most clinicians these days aren’t psychoanalytically oriented, and would probably condemn psychoanalysis. As in most things, psychologists can sometimes become divided over an issue, and the issue of Freud is by means no exception! Unfortunately, as most things go, those most opposed to Freud don’t really understand his theories, and have not read his works.
P.S. Just because a theory cannot be validated empirically doesn’t mean that it is quackery. Anyone familair with Schroedinger’s Cat? Was Schroedinger a quack as well?
Freud has been misunderstood for ages. It is a ridiculous irony that those who call Freud an “egotist” would probably not have that word to slander him with, were it not for Freud’s huge impact on modern society. Or was it that Freud was “unconsciously” sex-crazed?
Popular belief regarding Freud has always been inaccurate because most people didn’t understand his theories, nor did they read his works. A modern psychoanalyst would probably groan if you brought up penis envy. In fact, don’t ask most psychologists about Freud - most clinicians these days aren’t psychoanalytically oriented, and would probably condemn psychoanalysis. As in most things, psychologists can sometimes become divided over an issue, and the issue of Freud is by means no exception! Unfortunately, as most things go, those most opposed to Freud don’t really understand his theories, and have not read his works.
P.S. Just because a theory cannot be validated empirically doesn’t mean that it is quackery. Anyone familair with Schroedinger’s Cat? Was Schroedinger a quack as well?
Nothing much to add except a couple of links.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a940211.html
http://www.skepdic.com/psychoan.html
Also, the strongest criticism I have for Freud is of his limited range of subjects. He basically treated the well-off, middle-class, repressed people of that era. No surprise then, that he reached the conclusion that repressed thoughts, mostly of sex, is the cause of virtually every disorder we have. If he’d examined the poor population instead he would have reached very different conclusions.
As a person from a Germanic country, especially considering the time he lived in and the obsession with crapping throughout Europe and America, the former isn’t surprising. He wasn’t close to as nutty about it as some doctors. As a guy the latter isn’t surprising. The difference is that he spoke and wrote about it, which wasn’t common back before the Penthouse letters section.
Huuuuh, could you brief me on the obsession with crapping throughout Europe and America, please? Never heard about it…
:eek:
Once again with regards to Freud:
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people take his ideas out of the social and historical context of the times he lived and developed his ideas and theories.
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people do not realize the impact he has made on the society and the mind of an entire century in terms of liberating sexual freedom and a forum to discuss ideas about ourselves as indivduals with personal experiences and histories. He revolutionized the idea of the self and helped make it legitimate for indivduals to look at themselves and evaulate themselves more freely in the face of “social rules” of the times.
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He had an MD, he was a neurologist.
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Modern psychoanalysis has continued and evolved since his theories. Just a few…Melanie Kline, Fred Busch, Karen Hornei, even philosophers: Kristeva, Lacan and Yalom.
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Usually people that make such statments like Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor and YourOldBuddy have no understanding of Freud in historical context. I would recommend reading Peter Gay’s biography or Carl Schorske’s “Fin-de-Siecle Vienna” before making such sweeping and ignorant statements.
A quick, entertaining, and distressingly realistic primer in the health fads of the late 19th century is The Road to Wellville. What seems like a wacky and bizarre comedy is actually a docudrama with Bridgit Fonda AND Lara Flynn Boyle naked.
As my wife would say, he singlehandedly destroyed art and literature by making all but the looniest artists and writers painfully aware of what they were saying and what it said about them to people with the limited exposure to Freudian psychology that virtually everybody in the West has received. Had she been born a hundred years later Louisa May Allcott would’ve been in therapy trying to fix her Electra Complex, or at least too embarassed to tell anybody about it, rather than writing some of the most “father fixated” books of all time.
I think what you wife has to say is a cop out. So you wife does not view any art or literature past I would say hm…1940 worth anything since Freud has destroyed the minds of generations of would be intellects?
As far as Louisa May Allcott is concerned, you could never know that.
As far as the Oedipus and Electra complexes are concerned: there is nothing to be “fixed”…in freud’s theory it was a natural development of a child’s relationship to their first love-objects: their mother and father.
Would you be disappointed if I said yes, that’s exactly what she means, though not because their minds were destroyed but because they have become too self-conscious?
True, she might’ve kept up her strict regimen of self-medication instead of seeking therapy, which would’ve allowed her to stay one of America’s looniets writers.
According to Freud, perhaps. To Americans with a limited understanding of his theories and whose deepest belief is that anything, especially something as “pervy” as an Oesipus complex, can and must be fixed, I disagree.