I think he was just a pervert. He would say that everything was connected to sex, what a load of old cobblers!
This is complete nonsense, and proves you really do not know anything about his works and thought. Please go back and read my posts as well as those by kgmcneil and When I Was Cruel to start gaining some better understanding about that - and possibly, read some of his major works.
Probalby so, I'm sure he believed he was right. Playing devils advocate once could say even a broken clock tells the time right twice a day.
Er... Honestly, I do not like that metaphor so much. I mean, two minutes a day, but a day is made up with 1440 minutes! I mean, where do we put the other 1438 minutes then? :) I believe he was right into much more than that, albeit, as I wrote before, the path of psychology went forward and toned much of his finding down, so to speak - but it's also true he was a forerunner in many of those fields others investigated later with more realistic results - but with the undoubtable advantage of an already laid down path.
I do appreciate he steered psychology neurology, down some very useful paths, but I wonder if overall he did more harm than good?
If you consider how mental illnesses were cured before (and long after) Freud's establishment of the psychoanalytic therapy, I believe that was a step in the right direction. He proved that words can effectively heal, when used in a rigorously defined context. Then again, psychoanalysis went on, and of course it wouldn't be neither practical nor effective to continue, nowadays, to employ the psychoanalytic method exactly as he did 100 years ago.
A side note: no one here (except yours truly) mentioned his later writings on anthropology so far, as well as those about the phenomena of wit, mass society, war and religion, or the exchange of letters with Albert Einstein - the whole of which can hardly be dismissed like a collection of a pervert's fantasies. That just goes to show how little many know about Freud's work and influence on our vision of the world :)
A side note: no one here (except yours truly) mentioned his later writings on anthropology so far, as well as those about the phenomena of wit, mass society, war and religion, or the exchange of letters with Albert Einstein - the whole of which can hardly be dismissed like a collection of a pervert's fantasies. That just goes to show how little many know about Freud's work and influence on our vision of the world :)
A side note: no one here (except yours truly) mentioned his later writings on anthropology so far, as well as those about the phenomena of wit, mass society, war and religion, or the exchange of letters with Albert Einstein - the whole of which can hardly be dismissed like a collection of a pervert's fantasies. That just goes to show how little many know about Freud's work and influence on our vision of the world :)
Possibly very true, and also by the modern media interest / debate and general tittle-tattle surrounding his work, which focus largely on the parts of it that are sexually, or genitally oriented, they are actually validating some of his points in this area of his work.
Of course if one doesn't know anything about his work it has zero infulence on ones vision of the world :)
Er... yes and no. The man of the street could well have never read a line of Freud's works, yet know the basic meaning of concepts like "unconscious", "psychoanalisis" and "drive" - and maybe even think such concepts are fundamentally acceptable. The same goes for concepts like Friedrich Nietzsche's "nihilism" or Karl Marx's "proletariat" or "class struggle", just to cite some immediate examples. That means how much they have modified the vision of the world typical of contemporary Western cultures, as "social representations", like Serge Moscovici aptly calls them. Of course any serious debate about them cannot be done without a thorough general knowledge of those authors' works and thought ;)
Er... yes and no. The man of the street could well have never read a line of Freud's works, yet know the basic meaning of concepts like "unconscious", "psychoanalisis" and "drive" - and maybe even think such concepts are fundamentally acceptable. The same goes for concepts like Friedrich Nietzsche's "nihilism" or Karl Marx's "proletariat" or "class struggle", just to cite some immediate examples. That means how much they have modified the vision of the world typical of contemporary Western cultures, as "social representations", like Serge Moscovici aptly calls them. Of course any serious debate about them cannot be done without a thorough general knowledge of those authors' works and thought ;)
Freuds work really boils down to pointing out that which already existed. All the concepts you list existed before any of those men, they merely 'held their hands up' and spoke about them.
He didn't 'invent' anything..he just pointed at the doughnut and said, "look a doughnut and it's made of flour, sugar, eggs and milk"
Our vision of the doughnut hasn't changed...and some would argue his recipe is not the defining one anyway (he forgot the jam filling).
Freuds work really boils down to pointing out that which already existed. All the concepts you list existed before any of those men, they merely 'held their hands up' and spoke about them.
He didn't 'invent' anything..he just pointed at the doughnut and said, "look a doughnut and it's made of flour, sugar, eggs and milk"
Our vision of the doughnut hasn't changed...and some would argue his recipe is not the defining one anyway (he forgot the jam filling).
Science is not just invention its mostly discovery. In Science discovery is the master of invention. Electricity was not invented it was discovered, and once its properties understood harnessed in inventions. Gene's existed long before anyone found out about them, and you can't say that their discovery is worthless because they all ready existed. The same is true in cosmology, black holes existed long before we did, but its only receptively recently that they and their physical properties have been discovered. So this leads us to nurology/ psychology the sub concious existed long before it was discovered (that is if it exists at all, in science you can't be certain about anything) by researchers/ scientists or psychologists.
I believe what lets Freud down, is his over-emphasis on perverse sexual repression, urges and instinct.
By the way Allessandro, could you mention by a surname a single patient that he really helped and cured? ;)
He usually dealed with rich, bourgeiose women who suffered from so called "hysteria" - an illness practically inexistant in modern times in the pure 19th century form.
Hysteria resulted from a mix of boredom, strict morality that you couldn't fulfill, arranged marriages lacking love, unsatisfied sexuality, religious talk of sin and damnation, harsh upbringing, maybe even tight clothes ;)
And he talked with these ladies, talked and talked. Analysed their dreams, suggested that they desired their uncle Otto as a little girl, gave them cocaine and morphine and made a lot of other mumbo-jumbo but never removed the true causes.
They eventually got better and stopped therapy, probably not due to Freud therapy but despite of it. Still they struggled with problems for the rest of their lives.
A quote from Wikipedia:
Several writers have criticized both Freud's clinical efforts and his accounts of them.[70] Eysenck writes that Freud consistently mis-diagnosed his patients and fraudulently misrepresented case histories.[71] Frederick Crews writes that "...even applying his own indulgent criteria, with no allowance for placebo factors and no systematic followup to check for relapses, Freud was unable to document a single unambiguously efficacious treatment".
Of course in many cases his methods were much better than electroshocks but harmless doesn't mean helpful yet ;)
Science is not just invention its mostly discovery. In Science discovery is the master of invention. Electricity was not invented it was discovered, and once its properties understood harnessed in inventions. Gene's existed long before anyone found out about them, and you can't deny that their discovery is worthless because they all ready existed. The same is true in cosmology, black holes existed long before we did, but its only receptively recently that they and their physical properties have been discovered. So this leads us to nurology/ psychology the sub concious existed long before it was discovered (that is if it exists at all, in science you can't be certain about anything) by researchers/ scientists or psychologists.
I believe what lets Freud down, is his over-emphasis on perverse sexual repression, urges and instinct.
The point was the thinking/science already existed...he and others merely drew attention to it and isn't the first to do so...he 'popularized' it. That doesn't make a genius.
Science involves conducting repeatable tests that produce the same results. As everyone's mind works differently what works for one might not work for another. It's opinion..and we all have opinion. The reasoning why one person behaves they way they do might not be the reason the next person does.
Why anyone would pay heed to someone elses opinion over their own..right or wrong..seems strange to me.
Freuds work really boils down to pointing out that which already existed. All the concepts you list existed before any of those men, they merely 'held their hands up' and spoke about them.
He didn't 'invent' anything..he just pointed at the doughnut and said, "look a doughnut and it's made of flour, sugar, eggs and milk"
Our vision of the doughnut hasn't changed...and some would argue his recipe is not the defining one anyway (he forgot the jam filling).
he thoroughly analyzed and accumulated clinical and empirical experience to be able to affirm in a rational and pretty scientific way some concept that previously existed in literature or in philosophy, but not really in science.*
which is quite different from merely "expressing a concept".
it's like saying that the modern discovery of the atoms is the same as having an intuition of them, intuition which existed since democritus and the ancient greece. they are clearly not the same thing.
* of course psychological studies can hardly be as rigorous as biological studies, but this doesn't mean that psychology can't use a scientific approach.
The point was the thinking/science already existed...he and others merely drew attention to it and isn't the first to do so...he 'popularized' it. That doesn't make a genius.
Science involves conducting repeatable tests that produce the same results. As everyone's mind works differently what works for one might not work for another. It's opinion..and we all have opinion. The reasoning why one person behaves they way they do might not be the reason the next person does.
Why anyone would pay heed to someone elses opinion over their own..right or wrong..seems strange to me.
Now...tell me about your mother...
Not every scientist invents a new field, often they build upon existing knowledge in an incremental fashion. For example, Stephen Hawkins key work on gravitational singularities built upon several pre existing mathematical theories, principles and frameworks, most notably that of Albert Einstein. Cosmology and physics were around at the time of Socrates, Plato and, Aristotle , does that mean Stephen Hawkins can be dismissed as a copycat?
* of course psychological studies can hardly be as rigorous as biological studies, but this doesn't mean that psychology can't use a scientific approach.
I can take a scientific approach to studying ghosts, that doesn't make it a science, does not add credibility to the idea of ghosts or make me a genius for doing it.
I can take a scientific approach to studying ghosts, that doesn't make it a science, does not add credibility to the idea of ghosts or make me a genius for doing it.
Its all in the execution of the experiment. It does if you use a proper and rigorous scientific methods, rather then the pseudo scientific method we see on the TV and ridicule . I suspect most probably the outcome would me that they don't exist, or at most with current technologies not in the way we culturally perceive them.
I studied Psychology at degree level. I can authoritatively state that Freud's theories are pretty much all ********, and his "research" consisted of watching one or maybe two (at a push) small children, and no more than that. He didn't have the first clue what he was talking about.
What he can be credited for is for trying to take psychological sciences forward on a proper scientific footing, and succeeding in that respect - he opened the floodgates for both the valid science of psychology and the pseudo-science of psychiatry.
Hysteria resulted from a mix of boredom, strict morality that you couldn't fulfill, arranged marriages lacking love, unsatisfied sexuality, religious talk of sin and damnation, harsh upbringing, maybe even tight clothes ;)
I'm liking the sound of this! Do you have a publisher for this book yet?? :smile:
Maybe in good old Blackadder stylee you can add some ravishing gypies as well.
I studied Psychology at degree level. I can authoritatively state that Freud's theories are pretty much all ********, and his "research" consisted of watching one or maybe two (at a push) small children, and no more than that. He didn't have the first clue what he was talking about.
I have been teaching Psychology and Social sciences in high schools for about 7 years by now, and can authoritatively state that the above is pretty much all ******** :razz: Thousands of pages of thoroughly described case studies show that he did much more, in 50 years' work, than just watching a couple of children, and that he was well aware of what he was talking about. The mere fact that basic notions of his theory like the unconscious or the complexes have not been rejected by the following research on psychoanalysis - Jung, Ferenczi, Lacan, you name them - is enough to state that the path he was laying was a fecund one. You might disagree with the ultimate results of Freud's researches - and I, repeating myself, will state once again that most of them are superseded by now - but dismissing a lifetime of really groundbreaking work like that is not what I call constructive criticism.
As for the "been there, done that" old and tired argument, which Scottie just proved to be, well, old and tired ;), I'll just repeat myself:
As Paul Feyerabend put it later, science - i.e. every form of human knowledge which claims to be based on facts instead of mere opinions and/or tradition - does not proceed by means of always making false what was thought to be true before. On the other way, science does heavily draw from what is present in every epoch. Copernicus believed the Sun to be at the center of the Universe (it was a philosopher, Giordano Bruno, and not an astronomer, to state that the Universe, being infinite, has no "center" first). Marx developed his economic theories on the basis of Smith and Ricardo's studies, together with Hegel's dialectical vision of reality, made material by Feuerbach's influence. Freud based his studies on the hypnotic technique he learnt from Charcot and experimented with Breuer. And so on.
I have been teaching Psychology and Social sciences in high schools for about 7 years by now, and can authoritatively state that the above is pretty much all ******** :razz: Thousands of pages of thoroughly described case studies show that he did much more, in 50 years' work, than just watching a couple of children, and that he was well aware of what he was talking about.
in fact. there's really a lot of work behind his theories, be them right or wrong.
"thousands of psychologists and psychiatrists can authoritatively confirm that".
it's important to add that he not only proved, or at least stated, in a scientific way the existence of the unconscious or at least of unconscious thoughts and desires and feelings, but that the connection that he made between this and psychopathology totally opened new ways - even in the comprehension of the sane mind.
not only: he managed to conceive ways and means to probe these psychical depths, and even to cure neuroses.
I studied Psychology at degree level. I can authoritatively state that Freud's theories are pretty much all ********, and his "research" consisted of watching one or maybe two (at a push) small children, and no more than that. He didn't have the first clue what he was talking about.
What he can be credited for is for trying to take psychological sciences forward on a proper scientific footing, and succeeding in that respect - he opened the floodgates for both the valid science of psychology and the pseudo-science of psychiatry.
D.
I suspect Freud knew full well that the egos of post-rationalist student sons would aim to kill the reputation of their forebears.
You are killing the father of psychoanalysis Dunny, now you should marry its mother :razz: (I suggest Simone de Beauvoir would be a good challenge)
Comments
A side note: no one here (except yours truly) mentioned his later writings on anthropology so far, as well as those about the phenomena of wit, mass society, war and religion, or the exchange of letters with Albert Einstein - the whole of which can hardly be dismissed like a collection of a pervert's fantasies. That just goes to show how little many know about Freud's work and influence on our vision of the world :)
That's the MTV, ZX-Spectrum generation for you.
All i've taken on board from this discussion is that MadMekon likes watching Father Ted.
Of course if one doesn't know anything about his work it has zero infulence on ones vision of the world :)
Possibly very true, and also by the modern media interest / debate and general tittle-tattle surrounding his work, which focus largely on the parts of it that are sexually, or genitally oriented, they are actually validating some of his points in this area of his work.
Freuds work really boils down to pointing out that which already existed. All the concepts you list existed before any of those men, they merely 'held their hands up' and spoke about them.
He didn't 'invent' anything..he just pointed at the doughnut and said, "look a doughnut and it's made of flour, sugar, eggs and milk"
Our vision of the doughnut hasn't changed...and some would argue his recipe is not the defining one anyway (he forgot the jam filling).
Science is not just invention its mostly discovery. In Science discovery is the master of invention. Electricity was not invented it was discovered, and once its properties understood harnessed in inventions. Gene's existed long before anyone found out about them, and you can't say that their discovery is worthless because they all ready existed. The same is true in cosmology, black holes existed long before we did, but its only receptively recently that they and their physical properties have been discovered. So this leads us to nurology/ psychology the sub concious existed long before it was discovered (that is if it exists at all, in science you can't be certain about anything) by researchers/ scientists or psychologists.
I believe what lets Freud down, is his over-emphasis on perverse sexual repression, urges and instinct.
He usually dealed with rich, bourgeiose women who suffered from so called "hysteria" - an illness practically inexistant in modern times in the pure 19th century form.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria
Hysteria resulted from a mix of boredom, strict morality that you couldn't fulfill, arranged marriages lacking love, unsatisfied sexuality, religious talk of sin and damnation, harsh upbringing, maybe even tight clothes ;)
And he talked with these ladies, talked and talked. Analysed their dreams, suggested that they desired their uncle Otto as a little girl, gave them cocaine and morphine and made a lot of other mumbo-jumbo but never removed the true causes.
They eventually got better and stopped therapy, probably not due to Freud therapy but despite of it. Still they struggled with problems for the rest of their lives.
A quote from Wikipedia:
Several writers have criticized both Freud's clinical efforts and his accounts of them.[70] Eysenck writes that Freud consistently mis-diagnosed his patients and fraudulently misrepresented case histories.[71] Frederick Crews writes that "...even applying his own indulgent criteria, with no allowance for placebo factors and no systematic followup to check for relapses, Freud was unable to document a single unambiguously efficacious treatment".
Of course in many cases his methods were much better than electroshocks but harmless doesn't mean helpful yet ;)
The point was the thinking/science already existed...he and others merely drew attention to it and isn't the first to do so...he 'popularized' it. That doesn't make a genius.
Science involves conducting repeatable tests that produce the same results. As everyone's mind works differently what works for one might not work for another. It's opinion..and we all have opinion. The reasoning why one person behaves they way they do might not be the reason the next person does.
Why anyone would pay heed to someone elses opinion over their own..right or wrong..seems strange to me.
Now...tell me about your mother...
he thoroughly analyzed and accumulated clinical and empirical experience to be able to affirm in a rational and pretty scientific way some concept that previously existed in literature or in philosophy, but not really in science.*
which is quite different from merely "expressing a concept".
it's like saying that the modern discovery of the atoms is the same as having an intuition of them, intuition which existed since democritus and the ancient greece. they are clearly not the same thing.
* of course psychological studies can hardly be as rigorous as biological studies, but this doesn't mean that psychology can't use a scientific approach.
Not every scientist invents a new field, often they build upon existing knowledge in an incremental fashion. For example, Stephen Hawkins key work on gravitational singularities built upon several pre existing mathematical theories, principles and frameworks, most notably that of Albert Einstein. Cosmology and physics were around at the time of Socrates, Plato and, Aristotle , does that mean Stephen Hawkins can be dismissed as a copycat?
I can take a scientific approach to studying ghosts, that doesn't make it a science, does not add credibility to the idea of ghosts or make me a genius for doing it.
Its all in the execution of the experiment. It does if you use a proper and rigorous scientific methods, rather then the pseudo scientific method we see on the TV and ridicule . I suspect most probably the outcome would me that they don't exist, or at most with current technologies not in the way we culturally perceive them.
YOU decide!
:lol:
EDIT: Cue mile/boozy "I'll call you a dick for $15"
happily do it for free
What he can be credited for is for trying to take psychological sciences forward on a proper scientific footing, and succeeding in that respect - he opened the floodgates for both the valid science of psychology and the pseudo-science of psychiatry.
D.
I'm liking the sound of this! Do you have a publisher for this book yet?? :smile:
Maybe in good old Blackadder stylee you can add some ravishing gypies as well.
As for the "been there, done that" old and tired argument, which Scottie just proved to be, well, old and tired ;), I'll just repeat myself:
in fact. there's really a lot of work behind his theories, be them right or wrong.
"thousands of psychologists and psychiatrists can authoritatively confirm that".
it's important to add that he not only proved, or at least stated, in a scientific way the existence of the unconscious or at least of unconscious thoughts and desires and feelings, but that the connection that he made between this and psychopathology totally opened new ways - even in the comprehension of the sane mind.
not only: he managed to conceive ways and means to probe these psychical depths, and even to cure neuroses.
that's not exactly a bad result, i'd say.
I suspect Freud knew full well that the egos of post-rationalist student sons would aim to kill the reputation of their forebears.
You are killing the father of psychoanalysis Dunny, now you should marry its mother :razz: (I suggest Simone de Beauvoir would be a good challenge)