A somewhat unrelated post has turned into a slightly heated discussion about Freud - the historical value of his theories and his continued relevance. This debate was something that struck me when I moved to the US in high school. Freud was certainly given a lot more prominence over there than he was in Australia at the time and I found it really interesting to see teenagers constantly referring to his theories and how they related to contemporary issues that we were studying at the time.
I thought that since this was an interesting topic that others who didn’t read the original post might want to take part in, I would open up a new thread for just such a purpose. For those that don’t want to trawl back through the thread, here are some highlights (apologies if I have misrepresented anyone by abbreviating their comments - please refer to the originals before making too many assumptions):
Andy:
A Freudian slip? Newsflash! Ain’t no such thing! Only critical theory takes Freudian psychoanalysis (via Lacan) seriously anymore.
Pavlov’s Cat:
Andy, I defy you to get through a single day without using, thinking, reading or writing a single word that can be traced directly back to Freud’s thinking. I bet you can’t.
GregM:
Freud’s writings on psychology are nothing more than non-verifiable speculation. As such they have the function of forming the corpus of a secular religion. Freud attracts his true believers, and good luck to them if it makes them happy. Plenty of other people go through life doing silly things like following the teachings of Sun Myung Moon.However, because nothing Freud writes is scientifically testable it is junk and his followers are a cult just like the Moonies.
Steve Munn:
Freudian theory is no longer taken seriouisly by the overwhelming majority of mental health professionals.
Pavlov’s Cat:
[W]hat is this apparent and bloody nonsensical conviction that there is some über-mindset called ‘Freud’, that it is a matter of ‘belief’, and that one must either accept or reject it whole? It’s a set of theories, a set of frameworks, a vocabulary for talking about the way the mind works, an analytical and/or interpretive framework. It’s not a religion, whatever anti-Freud crusaders might think. (Whoops, originally typed ‘crudaders’, and don’t tell me it was only a mistake …)
[…]
Penis envy? Are you mad? Why would anyone want to have such a thing, apart from the bladder convenience, which I agree is truly enviable?
[…]
I am fully aware of (some of) the “mental health professionals’â€? attitude to Freud, thanks. […] But I didn’t say anything about mental health. I was talking about the Freudian analysis of language use (again, the topic of this thread). It’s a common misconception among Freud-haters that Freudian theory is exclusively about actual pathology and ‘illness’.
J-P-Z:
Much of Freud was and is useful; and still more has been shown to be mistaken, and/or nonsense. But so what? It’s like blaming Kepler for not understanding Einstein. Without Kepler, we might not have *had* Einstein. Give the man his due (but don’t worship him), and then move on. That would be the, well, scientific thing to do.
Laura:
I am a literary critic and my practice is permeated with Freud’s thought, top to botttom & inside out. I have read just about all of the standard edition and I wrote my Masters’ on Freud’s use of nineteenth-century literature in some of his case histories. I’m not a “true believer� though.All the things he wrote about feminine sexuality etc, I regard as obvious nonsense. His account of dreamwork and similar unconscious processes are lovely elegant constructions - extremely useful in lots of other contexts - but his actual dream analyses are hilariously improbable.
R.H.
I’m astonished that anyone would say Freud is a dead end. He was the first to come out and tell the truth, ie, sex motivates all human behaviour, and consequently (aside from organic damage) is the basis of mental illness.
Steve Munn:
I would put it this way Freud- is to psychology what alchemy is to chemistry or homeopathy is to medicine.
Update to complete Laura’s main point - Laura:
[W]e can disagree with Freud on details (some of them rather large details) but not on the big picture. Freud initiated an adjustment to epistemology comparable to the Copernican revolution: basic, profound, irrevocable. The therapeutic status of classical Freudian analysis is open to question - perhaps - but the philosophical legacy of psychoanalysis is not.
Steve Munn is right. SFA of Freud’s theories have panned out experimentally, or are completely untestable and thus unscientific.
As for those denizens of the humanities faculty who still take him seriously, just because a theory is emotionally satisfying doesn’t make it right. As distinct from say, behaviourism, which is *deeply* unsatisfying and pretty useless as a tool for analysing literature, but at least has experimental evidence to support it (though clearly it’s not an explanation of all human behaviour, as posited by its more famous exponenents).
Freud served his purpose well.
He mentored Jung and facilitated the true voice of psychology and mysticism.
Or as Sig would hate or perhaps love to hear it said…he gave birth to Carl.
In a dream.
Robert, did you read the original thread? Much of what you say has already been addressed, even if you don’t agree with what’s been said.
It’s not a matter of scoring points about who’s right and who’s wrong, it’s a matter of different ways of thinking about the world. This ‘completely untestable and therefore unscientific’ mantra is getting a little wearing. Given its patness and its ubiquity, it appears to have come out of a Weeties box. Most people who are interested in and/or knowledgeable about psychoanalysis just aren’t very interested in whether it’s ’scientific’ or not, don’t regard that as the ultimate criterion for everything, and don’t care very much if the rest of you do. Carry on, it’s a free country.
But I have yet to see one single scorner of Freud give any indication that he has actually read any of Freud’s work, or any work by any theorist or practitioner of psychoanalysis since. If ‘unscientific’ is the criterion of choice, you can’t get much more unscientific than not doing the reading.
And if you want to think it’s completely coincidental (for newcomers, see original thread) that a white radio announcer talking about Condoleezza Rice let slip the word ‘coon’ instead of what he consciously intended to say (’coup’), and instead of kook, cool, coop or coot, then you go right ahead.
I agree with Robert Merkel. Behaviourism is a dull and boring approach to psychology and it only provides very limited insights. Yet is has led to workable remedies for certain conditions such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Other fruitful research programs in psychology include social learning theories and cognitive theories.
On the other hand Freudianism has produced various modes of “psychoanalysis”, none of which are more effective than placebo therapy.
If Freudianism was still a potent and relevant research program you would expect it to heavily influence contemporary fields of study and treatment like sex therapy and childhood development. It doesn’t.
Finally, let me address one more of Pavlov’s criticisms of those who reject Freud. She says we are too influenced by the likes of Popper and we are only comfortable with the concrete and testable. This is not so. I’m interested in philosopy and most of that isn’t concrete or empirically testable.
And as regards Popper, one of the valid criticisms of his falsificationism is that it fails to meet his own testability criteria for a good theory.
Nonetheless, let’s not downplay the importance of science and scientific methods. Mental health problems can and do kill people. Sufferers deserve the most efficacious treatment modalities.
Having said all this, if Pavlov feels titillated each time she makes a typo, if she finds in it a great moment of self-revelation, then who am I to quibble?
I’ve read all Freud and adore him, tho’ I don’t agree with him. Wish I could have met him and shared a lunch (or a snort) with him.
That’s the way it is with groundbreakers.
Outran the churchies and the Nazi’s both in his day. And was for a time was the father figure to another, far greater man of the ages.
“…if Pavlov feels titillated each time she makes a typo…”
Heh heh. He said ‘titillated.’
Has anyone read “When Nietzsche Wept”? I only ask because it features Freud and Josef Breuer (as well as Nietzsche) and made me more sympathetic to all of them (at least, to their fictional selves in the novel). http://www.whiterabbit.net/@port05/Works/Writing/Reviews/when_nietzsche_wept.htm
Apparently it is being released as a film next year too. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0760188/
BTW It was (Another) Kim’s desire to have lunch with Freud made me think of the book.
Indeed he did.
We notice this because Pavlov’s Cat is a woman, and has tits (to the best of my knowledge). Perhaps this distracting, if unseen and only imagined, bio-social fact, (to borrow a term from mastrocchism) her comments about Freud’s influence on a particular way of thinking about language seem not to have registered with some - that we’re talking about linguistic structure and connections instead of psychiatric pathology.
If this thread goes on much longer without that distinction being drawn, they’ll end up making a testicle of themselves.
Cristy, I haven’t read that, to my shame.But I will.
Pretty fascinating times and folks there, eh?
I am even sympathetic to Nietzsche just on a personal basis, knowing his life.
Okay. I think the interest in this subject is quite nice, but I really question whether there’s any value in prolonging this particular discussion. Cristy, the part of my comment you quoted left out the punchline in a way that distorts what I hoped to communicate: we can disagree with Freud on details (some of them rather large details) but not on the big picture. Freud initiated an adjustment to epistemology comparable to the Copernican revolution: basic, profound, irrevocable. The therapeutic status of classical Freudian analysis is open to question - perhaps - but the philosophical legacy of psychoanalysis is not.
I am losing my temper, for which I apologise. But Pavlov is right: people who do nothing more than trot out the claim that Freud’s theories are not scientifically testable are only demonstrating that they haven’t read Freud and don’t understand what he was on about. Is history unscientific? Is poetry? Is language? I suggest beginning with the paper called “Constructions in Analysis”, where he addresses the claim that psycho-analysis operates with a form of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ reasoning. (Published in 1937.)
One more thing. Anti-psychoanalysis argufiers who want to bring up matters like Freud’s personal cocaine use (why does nobody ever mention his tobacco habit?) or his dumber ideas like penis envy, as if the obvious stupidity of such things invalidates every insight psychoanalysis ever offered, need to understand that there is the small matter of one hundred years of psychoanalytic tradition since Freud, and people like Anna Freud, James Strachey, Joan Riviere, Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, Wilfred Bion, Donald Winnicott, and Jessica Benjamin, to name a few, have made significant contributions to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, and obstinately continuing to identify p-a with Freud alone is like blaming Charles Babbage for not inventing the Internet.
Actually I am more titillated by other people’s typos than by my own. (Though not by their tits, though I sometimes think this is a shame.)
Zoe, thanks for spelling it out. It took me a while on the orginal thread to realise that it would be necessary.
Strangely, I’d never though of the bazoombas as a bio-social fact before, but now I will never be able to think of them any other way.
If we are onto Freud’s life, as we do seem to be, I once saw a home movie (screened in the museum that his Vienna apartment has been turned into) made in the last year of his life, when he had escaped the Nazis and made it to London. It was 1939, he was dying of cancer, the war was looming. He was very frail, but still formally dressed in three-piece suit and hat, sitting in someone’s garden in a deck chair, and bending over in an exhausted sort of way to stroke the ears of a little King Charles spaniel.
Very few things that are worthwhile are testable,Laura.
I would love to hear more of your thoughts on what you know more of than I do.
I am curious about your views on Freud and his relationship with Jung.
Always a gentleman despite his pariah status due to religion and politics…must admire him.
Laura says: “I am losing my temper, for which I apologise.”
I diagnose penis envy and the failure of your mother to properly breast feed and potty train you.
That will be $250 thanks. See you again next week at the usual time.
Shut the f up Steve.
You’re not Woody Allen. And thank God you’re not.
My questions are bona fides.
Seriously Kims, we should think of starting a club. Think of the combined power of all the Kims in the world, and what we could collectively do with it.
Completely OT, but I am wondering, Mr Munn, what exactly “placebo therapy” is?
Is it possible to have placebo therapy? What is it like?
A kicka&s Kim club?
Sure.
I lean a little right. But I am all for that.
Laura also says: “Anti-psychoanalysis argufiers who want to bring up matters like Freud’s personal cocaine use (why does nobody ever mention his tobacco habit?) or his dumber ideas like penis envy….”
Laura or Pavlov, can you please offer an explanation of the nasal reflex neurosis which is NOT based on Freud’s cocaine abuse? See this link for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Eckstein
Incidentally, Freud’s friend Fleiss was also a chronic cocaine user. Both Fleiss and Freud suffered nasal degeneration as a result of chronic abuse. But I guess you already new that.
Another interesting little factoid, the word hysteria derives from the Latin word for uterus.
It is a great pity that you have been beguiled by this absurd, drug addled misogynist.
Steve..he also diagonosed male hysteria. And you don’t even have a uterus to blame.
Too late here and my spelling is showing it.
Sorry to have misrepresented you Laura, I have updated the post to include your punchline.
I have not read much Freud, and am unlikely to in the near future, so I generally reserve my opinion on the guy and his theories. I have always found the penis envy stuff pretty off-putting, but assumed that there must be substantially more to Freud or he wouldn’t have remained so popular or seemingly relevant for so long…
From this perspective, I find it very interesting to hear what people have to say about Freud and his theories. I will close the thread if things get ugly or personal though. That certainly wasn’t the intention.
But you new that already, Steve.
Criticising Freud as no longer being relevant, is the same as criticising the Wright brothers because by today’s standards, the Wright Flyer is primative.
Freud’s theories of defense mechanisms are as relevent today as they were in the early 1900’s. Clinicians regularly use them as a means of demonstrating certain behaviour.
Also, just a very little correction for Steve Munn. It’s Cognitive Behaviour Therapy that’s useful in treating OCD and depression. Behaviour therapy has its roots in classical conditioning, made famous by Pavlov and his dog (or cat).
What a bizarre discussion. It’s like Steve Munn etc are sitting around saying “but Picasso is not testable!” and PC and Laura are thunking their heads on the nearest wall.
One more try …
*thumps head on wall*
The first recorded usage of ‘hysteria’ in its contemporary meaning is dated 1801. Sexism predates Freud, and indeed predates 1801, by rather a long way. Nobody here has denied either the (culturally entrenched and historically specific) sexism or the cocaine. They don’t affect the value that some of us place on his ideas and his influence on later artists and thinkers.
I’m still wondering why Steve thinks it’s all right (a) not to read other posts on the thread, and (b) not to read the work of the person whom he’s happy to trash on the basis of biased hearsay, happy memories of Psych 1, and newly-Googled bite-size meaty chunks of infotainment from Wikipedia. (Scientifically testable, every one.)
In the meantime, I don’t give a rat’s arse about the nasal reflex neurosis and I think it’s safe to say Laura probably doesn’t either. If you would stop obsessing about cocaine for long enough to actually pay some attention to the posts of the people who find value in Freud’s work and who are aware of the huge influence he had right across western culture in the 20th century, you wouldn’t be bothering to carry on with these dippy snipes. We don’t care. If Freud has nothing to say to you, move on. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.
Freud, of course, would say you were suffering from an Oedipal urge to ‘kill’ the male authority figure. You’re providing some convincing evidence that he might have had a point.
*thumps head on wall again*
Picasso = Freud. Nope.
Where do you get that?
Can we do a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance post where I can have a moan about it leaving my bike in bits?
Kate, with all due respect that comment is ludicrous. Freud did not hold himself out as an artist. He considered himself a scientist of the human mind.
Freud applied his theories during his lifteime and caused unnecessary suffering for patients like Emma Eckstein and Bertha Pappenheim. It is shameful that the true believers wilfully ignore the suffering this man caused. I again implore anyone with a serious interest in the subject to read Hans Eysenck’s “The Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire”. This book has perhaps done more than any other to demolish the hero-cult constructed around Freud.
Why am I on moderation?
And of course, let us not leave out the Bernay sisters.
I think the extended conversation has proved the point that even now Freud stirs it up and is seminal. Or ovaminal. O whatever. ;
Sorry, Steve, I have. I have a serious interest in the subject, you see.
*thump, thump, thump*
The issue of Freud’s mistakes and dud bits of thory is, as we all keep saying, a separate question from the insights into human language and behaviour provided by his work.
*packs gauze into wounds on head, which will later turn out to have been a terrible mistake*
Anthony — tough about the bike, dude. All Pirsig’s fault, of course.
Pavlov’s Cat, you are getting desperate and resorting to ad homs. I also had a serious interest in Freud, mostly because my instincts told me he was as mad as a march hare. Consequently I did a major research report on him in latter tertiary studies in the mid-nineties. I’m happy to say I got a HD for that assignment, even though the long-haired cardigan wearing male tutor had a soft spot for Siggy. So I feel I am at least as qualified as yourself to address this subject matter.
As to the argument that “Oh but so many of us still luv him, so he must have some merit”, you could say the same about Joseph Smith. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon
Having said all that, there is no doubt that Freud is a great source of amusement. But let’s put his works in the fiction section where they belong, preferably next to other petty bourgeois indulgences like crystals and aromatherapy.
Steve, I don’t hold much with Freud as a psychoanalyst with who I would discuss my ‘issues’ and I certainly wasn’t calling Freud an artist.
I was just saying that you’re not kind of getting what Laura and PC are trying to say. Terms of reference and all that. You’re not even arguing with their points.
Steve - STEVE! Do I have your attention? Are you reading? Good. Read this whole comment, because this is really, really important.
You wrote:
With this devastating bit of repartee, and the masterstroke of linking to a Wikipedia article, you forfeit your right to be taken seriously on this topic.
Is your head OK, Pavlov? Hope it’s not a structurally important wall you’ve been bashing it against.
This thread is over for me. The only good thing to have come out of it is the birth of the BlogArmy of Kims.
PC, the accusations against Freud go far further than mistakes and dud bits of theory, as this link shows:
http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/index.php?p=1496
In fairness to him he was a pioneer in his field and over the last hundred years, through research, observation and experimentation, we have gained a better understanding of human psychology than he, or any of his contemporaries could have hoped to have had at the time he constructed his theories.
However that is the same fairness that we extend to Claudius Ptolemy who constructed the model of the Sun and the planets moving around the Earth which was the accepted model until replaced by the heliocentric system of Copernicus and Kepler.
His work today has the same practical and theoretical value in psychology as the Ptolemaic system has in astronomy.
As to the pleasure it gives others in areas such as literary criticism and so on, well that is fine. However they could equally use the works of John Milton as the starting points of their critiques and no doubt some do.
Steve, the phrase ‘a serious interest in the subject’ was your own; I was quoting it, not entirely seriously.
The fact that you think any of us at any point has said anything like “Oh but so many of us still luv him, so he must have some merit� reinforces my conviction, if such reinforcement were needed, that you have not been actually reading any posts on this thread but your own.
It is very true that I am getting desperate, but not for the reasons you think.
Oh Pavlov, but I have been reading what you have said. For example you have lauded the “insights into human language and behaviour provided by his [Freud’s] work.”
As regards behaviour, the fact the Freud’s patient case histories were woefully misguided and that the diagnoses and treatments informed by his theories were wrong in each case demolishes your point.
As GregM’s above link demonstrates, Freud not only failed to successfully treat even one patient but his gross incompetence caused many of them to suffer needless misery.
Freud’s attempts to bribe the so-called Wolfman, Sergie Pankeev, to keep him silent was appallingly unethical. It is not surprising that “The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science� by Horace Judson, contains a considerable exposition of Freud’s fraudulence.
With respect to language characteristics, including the so-called Freudian slip, neuroscience has long since eclipsed Freud. Ditto for an understanding of dreams.
I expect that when the last of the true believers is lowered into the ground, history will properly judge Freud to be an Inspector Clouseau type character.
I must say psychoanalytic discourse was rather spoiled for me by my film classes in art school, but how can you read an essay like Freud’s The Uncanny and not be convinced the dude was onto something about how we humans are?
To answer my own question, a blindness to the fact that there can be a truth that is hidden from the scientific gaze and the talk of “testable hypotheses” and largely comes from insight may be behind this failure to see.
I’m sure one could (psycho)analyse the fact that one side here is talking past the other in Freudian terms, by the way, and obtain some relevant insight into why.
Ladies! Anyone fancy some knitting?
I’ve read more of the thread now.
I am totally in favour of this idea, fellow Kims!
A suggested logo:
Psychoanalyse that, Freud-sceptics!!!
Knitting! My fave!
Another Kim, it’s interesting to observe that one reason for the controversy that pre and post dated Freud’s falling out with Jung was Freud’s claim that Jung was a humanist or a mystic and didn’t obtain his results by using scientific method.
One that was a matter of some sensitivity to Jung, and from which he defended himself vigorously.
Ok, I might put up a naked feminist knitting circle thread!
Btw, Pavlov’s Cat - one can also blow holes in brick walls.
Knitting Circle thread has been opened!
I’m envious of that big gun.
In his autobiography, Jung recalled a conversation he had with Freud over the importance of the sexual theory. He asked Freud his justification for making the sexual theory the centre of his theory of psychology, while Jung didn’t see it as that important. Freud said something like:
“We must make a bulwark against the black tide of mud.”
Jung didn’t understand, and he asked him, “Against what?”
Freud replied, “Of occultism.”
It was this comment that pushed Jung into abandoning the sexual theory as a theory of everything, because Freud rejected what was Jung’s greatest interest, the occult.
I suspect, silkworm, that Freud knew where he was going with that jab against Jung.
I’d take Freud and all his wrong pathways to the mystic mumbo jumbo of Jung the ‘aryan Christ’ anyday.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679449450/104-8130657-4487953?v=glance&n=283155
Psychologists are not medical people, and a lot of it is just hocus pocus. Personal theory, that’s all. On the other hand, every psychiatrist has a medical degree, you can’t get more practical than that.
I’m surprised at the nasty little comments made against Laura and Pavlov. If you disagree with them, fair enough. But why get dirty? In the end you look quite stupid.
Indeed, of course, you could and Freudian psychoanalysis being mere speculation based on false and untestable premises you would come up with all sorts of weird and wonderful and false conclusions. Just as, I am sure, one could apply the equally valid writings of L. Ron Hubbard (are they used as a source for literary criticism in the Humanities Departments of our institutes of higher learning, by the way)and come up with all sorts of weird, wonderful and false conclusions.
Alternatively one could apply a much simpler analysis to get some insight into why BOTH sides here are talking past each other.
One side is interested in psychology for its practical application in treating various forms of mental illness, which is a scourge in our society, debilitating and sometimes devastating to its sufferers and frequently their families and a significant expense in our health and social welfare budgets. For them practical and effective treatments based upon proper and verifiable methodologies are important. For them Freud’s claims to providing understanding of how the human mind works and therefore a tool in preventing or treating mental illness has been shown to be untestable and, where testable, utterly worthless.
For the other side the discovery of verifiable objective truths, such as science aspires to achieve through its methodologies and protocols, is either futile or irrelevant as objective truth either does not exist or exists in truths that are hidden from the scientific gaze. The latter belief is, of course, the foundation of religion.
It follows that when the two sides talk to each other they commence from contradictory premises and they will talk past each other.
It only leaves me to ask those of the latter group why place Freud and not L. Ron Hubbard the core of your critiques? They both have equally valid relevatory texts.
For someone interested in truth, GregM, you don’t have too many compunctions about caricaturing the arguments of your opponents. Which is telling.
No one here, as far as I read the thread, has denied the use of scientific research in psychology. Nor do I see anyone claiming “objective truth… does not exist” etc. Rather, what people are pointing to is that Freud had genuine insights into the human condition which were perhaps conditioned by interpretive thought, and not by experiments and surveys of undergrad college students.
The argument that truth about human behaviour can be found through types of knowledge other than normal science is surely a classical humanist one rather than a postmodern one.
Your inattentiveness to what we are actually saying, as I’ve suggested, is more than susceptible of a Freudian interpretation.
But it certainly does suggest that you’re fabricating straw-postmodernists for some other purpose than engaging in a debate where there might be some genuine interchange. Which I, for one, would prefer.
Greg M
It only leaves me to ask those of the latter group why place Freud and not L. Ron Hubbard the core of your critiques? They both have equally valid relevatory texts.
May I be of some assistance -
Freud
Hubbard
Call Steve Lomborg the “Skeptical Leftist” if you like but I must admit I have some sympathy for what GregM is saying.
Some truly awful crap comes out of humanities and social science departments. Remember Marxism for instance? How many of us had to deal with nutty Bolshevik professors whose nostrils would flare if anyone deigned to criticise Lenin or Trotsky or Gramsci or whoever else it was they worshiped? And then you have the Freudians, post modernists, the Singer inspired animal liberationists, ethical vegetarians and a whole conga line of other nutters. There were a few diamonds in the rough and some of them I found inspirational, but on the whole, from my experience, Humanities and Social Science Departments do have too many kooks.
Having said that I have also studied some tertiary level economics. I also thought most the neoliberal stuff was bollocks too. Heck, I was kicked out of Sunday School at age 11 for attempting to convert other kiddies to atheism.
Maybe I’m just an anally retentive cynic. I blame my mother.
Steve, I repeat my point about reading what people actually say, not attacking a whole bunch of humanities academics, which I doubt has anything to do with the conversation we’re meant to be having?
I haven’t by the way. I did have a few lecturers who were card carrying members of the Liberal Party of Australia. Teaching in the Arts Faculty.
I disagree Kim. Freud’s subject matter is in the realm of science and Freud held himself out to be a scientist. As such his theories need to be analysed from a scientific perspective.
The fact that not one of the commenters here who have Freudian sympathies can point to any empirical evidence to support their contentions is telling.
What is the alternative, Steve? Is it value neutral?
Steve, you are being ridiculous.
I know little about Freud so have enjoyed this debate from a distance. But your analysis of Humanities Departments is worthy of Andrew Bolt - “Singer inspired animal liberationists”? Are you joking?
I’m with Laura. You do not deserve to be taken seriously anymore.
Kim I have not caricatured your arguments.
I have faithfully and precisely stated them, on the basis of what you have presented.
But you do not understand this.
Which is telling.
And then you offer the caricature of scientific methodology in psychology as:
Which is telling.
You then wrote:
Which is telling.
What it tells us, of course, is that you are the acolyte of a fraud, in denial (to use a Freudian term) and are prepared to demean yourself through an ad hominem attack by innuendo in order defend your indefensible position. More than enough material for Freudian interpretatiom there.
And of course you were inattentive to what I was saying when you wrote;
as I had presented both the classical humanist and post-modernist alternatives.
Which is telling.
Hey! Without Freud’s brillant mythology, an awful lot of great writers and screenwriters would have been left spinning their wheels in search of a character MacGuffin. (Looking at you in particular, Ernest Lehman and Paul Schrader)
Greg: can you please be as specific as possible about which part(s) of psychoanalytic theory and method you have in mind when you dismiss it as untestable and thus worthless?
Freud’s model of the structure of the psyche?
The idea that behaviour has an ongoing pathology?
The suggestion that religion is to civilization as the superego is to the instincts?
The idea that hysteria and other neuroses, particulary obsessional neuroses, are not entirely somatic in origin?
Drive theory?
Free association?
The analytic setting and method?
Freud’s theories of sexuality?
The goal of a general psychology, not just a medicalised one?
His explication of the symbolic operations of language?
Transference?
It is certainly telling that after 70 odd posts not one pro-Freudian commenter has been able to provide evidence to support their positions.
It is also telling that the LP sisterhood have collectivised and descended into ad hominators.
GregM and myself have presented plenty of evidence to illustrate the povery of Freudianism and the travesties that surround the case histories upon which the theory was supposedly built.
The standard type of replies so far have been along the lines of Hans Eysenck is a “wanker” so his work on Freud doesn’t count and the scientific method is inapplicable, even though Freud considered his theories scientific.
For the third and final time, please show me the evidence. Put up or shut up.
GregM and Steve Munn have been getting more and more belligerent and inattentive in their comments on this thread, but due to my general ignorance of Freud, I haven’t had a lot to say about it.
Its funny how much my reaction changed when things got a bit closer to home:
Now that’s just ridiculous! What is so nutty about valuing life, Steve?
Laura, I value life a great deal and I do actually have some respect for Singer himself. I recently read Peter Singer’s “One World: The Ethics of Globalisation” and I was impressed with much of it. Interestingly, unlike many of his acolytes, he was quite positive about globalisation.
Nonetheless, some of his followers have gone completely off the rails. For instance there was the murder of Pym Fortuyn by an animal liberationist. There is also the notorious kangaroo slaughter video in which British animal liberationists paid an unlicensed shooter to shoot roos so they could get some gory video nasty footage.
If you go to an animal liberationist website it isn’t uncommon to see comments along the lines of humans are the worst animals of all.
As a Greens member, and a dedicated environmentalist, I am frustrated by the animal libbers who want to ban effective feral animal control methods like aerial shooting and poison baiting. Or they say feral cats should be desexed and released back into the wild!
If you then ask the animal libber about what effect this would have on highly endangered native animals like the brush tailed rock wallaby, the most common response is “what is a brush tailed rock wallaby?”. Strewth!
How many of us know for example, that the last mob of brush tailed rock wallabies in the Grampians was wiped out in 2001 by a single fox?
I was also exposed to such wooly thinking while doing the Bachelor of Social Science (Socio-Environmental Assessment and Policy) course at RMIT.
I will leave the ethical vegetarian issue for another thread, should a thread ever be created on this site on this issue, since I’m already way off topic in response to your questions.
By the way, GregM and I have not been belligerent. All we have done is politely ask for evidence. All we have got so far is evasion. I guess that must be all you have to offer.
For the third and final time, please show me the evidence. Put up or shut up.
IFreud’s not winning friends here on the basis of his clinical acumen and healing of the mentally ill. So criticising his inadequate and even harmful treatment is beside the central point of the discussion.
It’s reasonable to consider these issues, of course, but simply repeating them with increasingly hairy-chested breast-beating doesn’t actually convince or persuade with people who are having a different discussion.
And as for It is certainly telling that after 70 odd posts not one pro-Freudian commenter has been able to provide evidence to support their positions.
I’m all out of links to wikipedia today, sorry.
Steve, it was Cristy asked you that question. We are separate people you know.
As for this bleat about evidence, when I hear from either yourself or Greg which specific aspect of psychoanalytic thought you want elucidated - refer to the list above if you’re having trouble with this part - I will happily waste another day preparing a fully researched and immaculately documented response for you to not read.
Laura and Christy, I apologise for mixing up your names. I’m not a morning person and my brain is still groggy. A couple more caffeine fixes and I’ll be OK!
Now Laura, if you have been diligently reading this thread you will know that I have already made a request for evidence in support of a specific Freudian theory, the Nasal Reflex Neurosis.
I look forward to seeing your research piece at the end of the day.
You’re right into this narrowing-down of requests, aren’t you Steve Munn?
…
Incidentally you made the comment before that:
I think we all remember Marxism, and I think this shows the deep lack of understanding you and GregM have for the point of Freud’s work. You don’t have to be a revolutionary socialist with a commitment to one doctrinal line to appreciate the Marxian contribution to economics, politics and history. In fact it helps if you’re not one.
It’s the same with Freud. You don’t have to be a doctrinaire psychoanalyst to acknowledge his contributions to science—starting people thinking about the mind.
And what Zoe said.
Liam, I agree with you on Marx but disagree with you on Freud. Modern psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience and such like owe nothing to Freud. If anything, the dead hand of Freudianism has held back these fields of inquiry.
By the way, Laura did ask me to narrow down to one specific Freudian concept and I have simply complied. What’s you beef?
The Nasal Reflex Neurosis wasn’t on Laura’s list - which was pretty comprehensive. Using one of the few specific Freudian concepts that has already been dismissed by people on all sides of the debate on this thread seems a little beside the point, Steve.
I’m not an expert, but I was under the impression that Laura and PC were, from the very beginning, defending Freud’s contribution to our understanding of language - and quite specifically not any neurosis or mental illness - so why don’t you actually address that issue?
Thank you for recognising that Laura and I are not the same person. Next you could try to spell my name correctly. There is no ‘h’.
Glad you didn’t take up my invitation to derail this thread into a discussion of ethical vegetarianism. That really would have been naughty. Perhaps another time.
Laura asked you:
You replied with:
Does this mean if one theory is bunk, Freud’s whole output, and the work of psychologists influenced by Freud is also bunk?
Did someone say unscientific?
Golly, so now Freud’s a liability!
What a laugh.
Munn you can knock your head against the wall till your brain falls out, there’s no going back, not now; Freud has changed the way people think.
You’re unlikely to do that.
Actually Liam, Laura then said in her next post: “As for this bleat about evidence, when I hear from either yourself or Greg which SPECIFIC [my emphasis] aspect of psychoanalytic thought you want elucidated - refer to the list above if you’re having trouble with this part…”
Maybe you should read a little more carefully before turning on your ad hominator.
And Cristy, Laura didn’t restrict me to her list, it was simply a helpful guide. Furthermore Laura has not previously dismissed the Nasal Reflex Neurosis- it was PC. As far as I know Laura may champion the Nasal Reflex Neurosis and may have a vast array of evidence that convinces us unbelievers that Freud was onto something.
The main reason why I raise the Nasal Reflex Neurosis is because pro-Freuduians pooh-pooh the notion that Freud’s chronic cocaine addiction had any influence on his theories.
Critics have pointed out, and elaborated at length, on the side effects on a severe cocaine addiction and how they seem to mirror so much of Freudian theory. Such side effects include powerfully vivid dreams that tend to trouble the slepper long after wakening.
Is it at all likely that Freud’s ideas on dreams were not even slightly influenced by the effects of cocaine? If Freud was somehow able to separate out such effects when conducting his scholarship, how did he do so? Or if Freud was immune from such typical symptomology, where is the evidence?
And can we please have no more personal attacks. I am being polite and have a genuine interest in having an intelligent discussion om this matter.
DISPOSING OF STEVE’S OBSESSION WITH THIS NASAL REFLEX THING
By Laura
In the index to the 24-volume Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, there is only one entry for “nasal reflex neurosis.” The only time Freud ever mentions this thing, whatever it is, is in a paper first published in 1895, called “On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia Under the Decription ‘Anxiety Neurosis.’” (S.E. vol. 3, pp 90-115.)
(In terms of the development of Freud’s thought, this is a pre-psychoanalytic paper. He has not even fully adopted the theory that there are unconscious mental processes.)
He begins by saying that the current term ‘neurasthenia’ is not very useful to medicine, as too many pathologies are bundled into it, some of them clearly organic in origin, such as the bad-tempered behaviour, listlessness and headaches which can accompany chronic flatulence and constipation, and some others equally clearly having less mechanical, bodily causes. (That he is even arguing this shows how much of what we take for granted today, ie that you can be sick in the head without there being a bodily cause for it, and this headsickness in turn can lead to your developing some physical symptoms, begins with Freud.)
He then proposes separating out what we would today call psychoneuroses from physically caused neuroses
Freud mentions this nasal reflex neurosis business once in the course of his entire career, and then only in order to be clear about what he is not interested in. He never mentions it again. Psychoanalysis has no ‘theory of the nasal reflex neurosis.’ Those lines come from the intro paragraph to a 25 page paper which goes on to explore what might be signified by the fact that patients suffer from neuroses underlied by anxieties with no apparent psychical origins, ie, no conscious or apparent basis in anything the patient thought or felt. Freud didn’t just randomly announce that he’d thought up this wild theory called the Unconscious - he felt his way to that hypothesis based on observations like the ones discussed in this paper.
So it remained for me to wonder where Steve got this nasal reflex bone in the first place. In the library I picked up a copy of the book he keeps mentioning, Hans Eysenck’s Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire. And sure enough, in the course of a rather sensationalised account of Freud’s sex life and his style of writing during the 1890s, I found this (p38):
Eysenck doesn’t give a source for this phrase he twice places in quote marks. He implies it comes from Ernest Jones, who wrote a biography of his colleague Freud, but it is not to be found in Jones. Whatever. He simply wants to say that because Freud was a drug-addled coke-head, Freudian theory is bizarre and ridiculous.
If that’s not an ad hominem argument, well, shoot me.
One more thing: while we’re on the subject of ad hominem argumentation, I’ve been puzzled throughout this thread by the claim that ‘the LP sisterhood’, which I take to be a dismissive way of referring to me and other women, ha