
Untangling the Complicated, Controversial Legacy of Sigmund Freud - pepys
https://www.thecut.com/2017/09/sigmud-freud-making-of-an-illusion-book.html
======
valuearb
In the end he's just another religious leader. The problem is his religion has
successfully pretended to be a science for a hundred years.

~~~
westoncb
From the article:

 _“Did Freud get some things wrong?” says Lee Jaffe, the president-elect of
the American Psychoanalytic Association. “Sure. But he also got many things
right too.” Freud’s theories on unconscious mental processes, the importance
of behavioral ambivalence and conflict, the origins of adult personality in
childhood, mental representations as a moderator of social behavior, and
stages of psychological development are all still relevant today. Freud also
changed the public’s understanding of sex and desire, perhaps more than anyone
else, by equating female desire with male desire. And, just by placing sexual
desire and perversions into a “scientific” context, Freud freed sexuality from
the largely religious context that focused on its moral degeneration or
inherent criminality._

The ways in which he was wrong are much more nuanced than what you're
suggesting.

~~~
beagle3
Freud claimed that schizophrenia was a result of ambivalent mother care, and
quite a few other things that he had no reason to claim (if it was science and
not religion).

He was wrong in many ways with no nuance whatsoever, but mostly, there isn't
much in common between Freud and science. Which is basically what GP was
saying.

Freud deserves credit for taking psychology as a field of study mainstream -
and the debit for founding it on religious principles which, unfortunately,
still dominate quite a bit of it. His net contribution is usually assumed to
be positive, but that's not an uncontested conclusion.

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QAPereo
_" My belief is that if high schools did their job, most high-school graduates
would be capable of seeing through Freud..."_

Yeah, and most MarCom, religion, and much of modern politics. Now you know why
they don't work.

------
solidsnack9000
Even today people with training in modes of therapy that are more or less
theoretically divorced from Freudianism will say that "Freud is the basis of
all therapy". He wasn't the first person to philosophize about the parts of
the soul or the first person to offer therapy; but he was a very prolific
writer and thinker early on in our attempts to bring a scientific
understanding and therapeutic emphasis to what had previously been the
province of religion and disinterested philosophers.

It is undeniable that he failed in many significant ways, but three basic
ideas to seem to hold up:

* The transference and the counter-transference -- the patient projects on to the therapist and vice versa

* The defense mechanisms -- methods by which people seek to escape not from their situation but from their feelings about it

* The corrective emotional experience -- therapy provides a way, in part through the transference, for the patient to work through feelings that they otherwise deny themselves

Freud had many crazy ideas, too -- and both he and his successors devoted far
too much time and effort to these crazy ones. Quit when you are ahead.

~~~
emerged
May we one day succeed enough to be considered by many a failure.

~~~
beagle3
Various dictators and the vast majority of televangalists (e.g. Joel Osteen)
come to mind. Are you sure you want to succeed that way? I don't; and while
Freud's history has many redeeming features, the saying is "at least Mussolini
made the trains on time"[0], so the latter might also have had redeeming
features.

[0] But see [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/11/the-
problem-w...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/11/the-problem-with-
mussolini-and-his-trains/507764/) ; likewise, it's possible that freud's
positives will turn out not to be.

------
thatsethnz
There needs to be a distinction between Freud the clinician, whose theories
have all but been entirely surpassed in the treatment of mental illness, and
Freud the philosopher, who is still a major reference point in discussions of
philosophy and cultural theory. Marx is still an active force in those
conversations too. These discourse discuss methods of interpreting literature,
art, history and culture.

The great structural thinkers of the last century, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Darwin,
Nietzsche were the last philosophers that attempted schemas to describe all of
history and culture as a single synthesized whole governed by definable
mechanisms . Their flawed tools (the world spirit, the economy, the
unconscious, biological evolution, and the will to power) are all somewhat
rusty but there have been no real contenders to replace them.

~~~
brighteyes
> Hegel, Marx, Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche

Darwin seems very out of place there.

First, he was primarily a scientist, not a philosopher. Second, his theories
are for the most part still very much dominant and accepted as true in his
field - not just some overall insights and direction (as with Freud) - but the
actual details. Modern biology very much believes in and is based on Darwin's
theories. It's remarkable how right he still is after all this time.

~~~
thatsethnz
This is true. But Darwin acts as a figurehead in many longstanding
philosophical discussions. I'm thinking of thinkers like Herbert Spencer, who
believed that the structures of darwinian evolution could be applied to
cultures, religion, even the mind. When people quote "survival of the fittest"
it was Spencer they are quoting, but Darwin they are referencing.

It is also possible to overstate both Darwin's correctness (Pangenesis for
example was a non starter) and his novelty (The idea that humans evolved from
non-human ancestors that came from the sea is as old as Anaximander -- 600
BCE).

But there is a Darwinian/Spencerian ring to way we talk about failed
programming languages, coding practices, failed corporations, technologies and
economies: They failed to thrive, failed to form a community to carry forward
their genetics and fight against the various forces that fight against them,
compete for resources etc. Darwin's ideas have sublimated into ideology...

------
LMYahooTFY
Interesting, I'm not well read on Freud's work and the notion that he equated
female sexual desire with male sexual desire isn't one I've heard before. It
seems in some way (maybe just slightly) contrary to the impression I've
gleaned from most summaries: that he effectively thought women were governed
by subconscious sexual desires in a way that men were not. Can anyone help me
out here?

On a related note, I'm very interested in his rather indirect legacy through
his nephew, Edward Bernays, and insight into what Freud thought about how his
nephew utilized his conclusions to lay the foundation for the PR industry.

One of the first large marketing campaigns for a tobacco company comes to
mind. If I recall correctly, Bernays commissioned attractive women to smoke
cigarettes in high traffic areas.

~~~
brighteyes
He said that everyone, men and women (and even children), were governed by
subconscious sexual desires. In that respect he was pretty modern - or perhaps
that thanks to his influence, we are how we are today.

But on the other hand, he did have detailed theories of male and female
sexuality and how they differ. Those details (Oedpial complex, penis envy,
etc.) are for the most part laughable today. But they paint an unflattering
picture of both women and men, in different ways, so you do see criticism of
him there.

~~~
GuB-42
Well, it is obvious that sex matters, and maybe Freud helped with the idea
that sexual desire should warrant proper consideration, however I think he did
more damage with his approach than he helped modern psychology.

All of his research was laughable by today's standards. Not just the details,
everything. It is all misguided ideas made to look scientific. He was right on
some points of course, but that's because chance make it so that even the most
clueless individual can't be always wrong.

Maybe I am misguided myself but I don't know why Freud is credited so much. It
looks like a lot of advances in psychology start with the refutation of one of
his ideas rather than built on top of them.

~~~
brighteyes
Yeah, a lot of advances in psychology start with refuting one of Freud's
ideas, but it's no different than modern (Enlightenment) physics starting with
refuting Aristotle. It doesn't mean Aristotle wasn't a massively influential
genius. In fact that Aristotle and Freud are the starting point for what came
after them shows how important they were.

Freud deserves credit for revolutionizing an entire field, creating something
new and coherent. Given the context of his time, he was a genius, like
Aristotle was in his time.

Also, while most of Freud's details are of course pitifully ridiculous today,
the basic insight that the unconscious matters, and that we can see its
influence in indirect ways, is still a valid idea today. It's debated a lot,
but it's a core concept we've never abandoned, so he deserves credit for that
too.

~~~
valuearb
It's not a valid idea, there is little to no scientific validity in the entire
world of psychology. Psychologists will continue to chase their tails
"proving" things with unscientific methods that will later be unproven. The
fact that he was the first pseudo scientist to defraud the public in this
field doesn't make him a genius any more than a carnival huckster is.

~~~
LMYahooTFY
Care to elaborate on your threshold of scientifically valid then?

~~~
valuearb
Repeatable experiments that don't rely on whisks of statistical credibility.

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ZeroGravitas
Isn't Freud a case where the old line "Your work is both novel and true,
unfortunately the parts that are true are not novel and the parts that are
novel are not true" holds?

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gtirloni
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker has a few chapters about Freud. It's a
very interesting perspective and I highly recommend that book.

------
haffla
"And yet, although Freudian theories are no longer a part of mainstream
science, Freud is still incredibly well-known..."

This is just plain wrong.. the author does not have any sources, no evidence..
just a bold claim, opinion.

~~~
beagle3
Freudian theories were never science (as we define it today) - as Popper
pointed out after trying to reconcile scientific inquiry with Freud's and
Adler's work - since they cannot be falsified, see e.g.
[https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/12451/why-did-
kar...](https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/12451/why-did-karl-popper-
criticize-freuds-theories)

They might be part of mainstream psychology (I have read conflicting
accounts), but they are definitely not part of mainstream science; very little
of psychology is.

