# Reading > Philosophical Literature >  Freud

## black butterffl

i seriously never read any of his books, however in my philosophy class, my teacher was talking about him, and i was really interrested in his studies...
i was wondering if anyone know him and what does he/she think about him?

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## blp

> I think his ideas were very innovative, but I don't think, in light of research, they hold up now. Some do, to a certain extent, yes, but most of them, no.


That isn't really so. Psychoanalysis, the practice Freud largely invented, is still practiced. His ideas about psychological structures such as the id, the ego and the superego as well as the unconscious still have currency, both among analysts and philosophers. 

I've lately been reading his book on dream analysis on Project Gutenberg. Well worth reading.

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## blp

> Yes, it's practiced and taught, I agree, but there aren't many practicing psychoanalysts around. And anxiety, depression, OCD, even anorexia, etc. have been found to be chemical disorders that require medication and that can't be resolved through Freud's "talking cure." Freud's ideas on hysteria, etc. are so outdated now. He's an important historical figure, but his methods aren't at all practical today. Psychoanalysis has always been a terribly long, slow, expensive process that rarely gave one satisfactory results in the first place.


There are tons of practicing psychoanalysts and large psychoanalytic organisations. It's a work in progress. Virtually no one does it exactly as Freud did anymore, but his ideas are still core to a lot of psychoanalysts' practices. 

In the past few years, drug companies have made a great play of the idea that certain disorders are 'chemical' and can be better treated through medication than analysis or therapy - an idea that plays right into the hands of sufferer's denial, laziness and general sense of hopelessness about being able to understand their symptoms. However, more recently, it's begun to be acknowledged that serotonin reuptake inhibitors (seroxat, prozac) and other drugs have been hugely overprescribed, often very carelessly, and are by no means as efficacious as first claimed (and that's not to mention the side effects). To suggest that the debate is over on the nature and treatment of some of the disorders you mention is enormously misleading. It's also a refusal of the radical dimension of psychoanalysis, which is its potential to interrogate and nullify oppressive belief structures in the minds of patients. 

Other than that, can I ask you to be more specific about your claims? His ideas on hysteria are outdated how? His methods are impractical today why? Because they always were or because people are somehow different from people in Freud's day (at which time, despite his technique being in its infancy, he cured significant numbers of his patients).

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## blazeofglory

I do not think Freud was right in many things, and particularly his ideas that sex is a determinant of the way human beings behave are flawed. Sex has no primacy over human behavior. It has a subservient role in life.
No philosopher is fully and flawlessly right. That is where Marxists and communists fail. In fact all contribute from their respective zones and that is how things or ideas evolve and culminate.

We take Freud's ideas for granted. He was a thinker, and independent thinker the way we are. He analyzed, and went into depths in some cases and in others he failed.

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## Virgil

If Freud had limited himself to social science, and his theories were strictly a vision of human insight, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. I might even say it's creative and interesting. But the fact that he claims to put himself into a scientific/biological framework then we can only conclude it's a complete failure and frankly he, as a doctor and scientist, must have known that his theories were built on anectdote. Anyone in the scientific community can see that Freud is either a fraud (how ironic that Freud and fraud are almost homophones) because he knew that his theories did not meet scientific scrutiny or he was one of the poorest scientists to ever claim a scientific mantle. Freudian psychology is not science; it is pseudo-science. There is no biological mechanism to cure any mental problems through psychoanalysis. There is no such biological link called Oedipal complex. His understanding of the id/ego/superego is just a model of understanding the human persona. It is no different than a novelist creating an understanding of human nature. It is no different than the collective author of the Old Testament creating its understanding of human nature. In fact it is no different than than the model of a person (ego) with a good angel (super ego) on one's right shoulder and a bad angel (id) on one's left shoulder. Freud could have been an interesting philosopher or writer if he had not made scientific claims. But he had to make scientific claims or he would have been insignificant, just another writer with a world view. For him to be taken seriously in a world post enlightenment, he had to form a scientific link between his theories and reality. Limiting himself to social science or mysticism would not have been satisfactory. There is strong evidence that Freud actually even falsified his data. He had to. In an era where scientific world view is the only credible framework, he needed to present his theories as biological. His theories of schizophrenia are actually laughable.

Here's from The Skeptic's Dictionary:



> Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is considered the father of psychoanalysis, which may be the granddaddy of all pseudoscientific psychotherapies, second only to Scientology as the champion purveyor of false and misleading claims about the mind, mental health, and mental illness. For example, in psychoanalysis schizophrenia and depression are not brain disorders, but narcissistic disorders. Autism and other brain disorders are not brain problems but mothering problems. These illnesses do not require pharmacological or behavioral treatment. They require only "talk" therapy. Similar positions are taken for anorexia nervosa and Tourette's syndrome. (Hines 1990: 136) What is the scientific evidence for the psychoanalytic view of these mental illnesses and their proper treatment? There is none.


 Read more here: http://skepdic.com/psychoan.html

And you can read a review of _PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE_  on the various published studies showing the either mistakes or outright falsities put forth by Freud: http://www.cis.vt.edu/modernworld/d/Freudeval.html.

Finally mental illness is a biological function. What made Freud persuasive in his day is the lack of understanding on how the brain works. It is still a somewhat ununderstood organ, and therefore ripe for this Freudian silliness to still be promulgated.

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## DapperDrake

> Yes, drug companies peddle their drugs and doctors overprescribe. The FDA gives clearance far too soon.


I hope you're not serious, you may not of noticed but the pharmaceutical industry is in trouble at the moment precisely because the FDA is too strict and and is turning down drugs that it should be letting though purely because they want to cover their own backs. 
Vioxx was a disaster yes but that does not mean it should not of been approved, its a perfectly viable drug but Merck didn't disclose all of the test data soon enough and so the doctors prescribing it didn't know of the potentially deadly side effects for people with heart problems. 
If the FDA as it is today existed a century ago you have to doubt weather drugs like aspirin, paracetamol, and penicillin would of been approved.

At the end of the day, whether its right or wrong for the FDA to be careful its simply not a viable option - drug companies have to make money or they simply won't be able to make new drugs.
NDA's are down, Approvals are down, Funding in biotech is down massively...

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## black butterffl

> Oh, thank goodness I'm no longer alone in thinking what you've expressed far better than I. Freud actually harmed people, killed some.



he killed people??? i never heard about it?
is it when he was trying to find the cure or what??

as for his studies, well i too think he's a great thinker and he made a huge progress and turned the phylosophy like 180 degrees
he did some mistakes but we cannot deny that he actually found the cure and many patinces became normal again like the famous "ANNA O"

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## sprinks

All I ever hear about him is things related to sex and the subconcious. 

Slightly unhelpful, but still on topic, heres some Freud comics for your, well, enjoyment  :FRlol:

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## black butterffl

hahahaha from where did u get those :P ?

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## sprinks

> hahahaha from where did u get those :P ?


http://www.savagechickens.com/

 :Biggrin:

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## Virgil

> he killed people??? i never heard about it?
> is it when he was trying to find the cure or what??
> 
> as for his studies, well i too think he's a great thinker and he made a huge progress and turned the phylosophy like 180 degrees
> he did some mistakes but we cannot deny that he actually found the cure and many patinces became normal again like the famous "ANNA O"


Turned what philosophy around? He replaced one myth with another.

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## sprinks

> *Virgil*, you made me think I was hallucinating. LOL You're now using the avatar *Janine* was using. Maybe I am hallucinating. Hope not. I don't use any illegal substances, I should add. :O



Unlike Freud  :Wink:   :FRlol: 


(I posted this along with others on the previous page, yes, but it seemed appropriate again lol)

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## Virgil

> *Virgil*, you made me think I was hallucinating. LOL You're now using the avatar *Janine* was using. Maybe I am hallucinating. Hope not. I don't use any illegal substances, I should add. :O
> 
> Oh, I see. LOL It's steal an avatar day!


Yes, I just realized. I was confused when Papaya stole mine. I was about to steal yours, since you were on, but I thought it might really confuse Janine.  :Biggrin:   :FRlol:

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## sprinks

> LOL *sprinks*, you always manage to make me laugh when I feel down. And when I don't. That's far more important than anything Freud ever accomplished. Kudos to you!  Thanks for posting those.


I'm happy to hear that  :Smile: , and I'm always glad to make people laugh and make them feel a little happier!  :Biggrin: 
I think the cartoon chickens make Freud a little less absurd by kind of making fun of him... Yes he was a great thinker and all... But his theory on the Oedipus Complex!? (I stumbled across his theories on that when learning about Oedipus Rex)

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## vheissu

> I hope you're not serious, you may not of noticed but the pharmaceutical industry is in trouble at the moment precisely because the FDA is too strict and and is turning down drugs that it should be letting though purely because they want to cover their own backs. 
> Vioxx was a disaster yes but that does not mean it should not of been approved, its a perfectly viable drug but Merck didn't disclose all of the test data soon enough and so the doctors prescribing it didn't know of the potentially deadly side effects for people with heart problems. 
> If the FDA as it is today existed a century ago you have to doubt weather drugs like aspirin, paracetamol, and penicillin would of been approved.
> 
> At the end of the day, whether its right or wrong for the FDA to be careful its simply not a viable option - drug companies have to make money or they simply won't be able to make new drugs.
> NDA's are down, Approvals are down, Funding in biotech is down massively...


Slightly deviating from Freud here (my apologies  :Smile:  ) but I'd like to comment on this: 

The pharma industry is indeed having massive trouble in marketing new drugs, but it's not just the FDA's regulations that is the main obstacle. It takes aproximately 20 years to make a new drug (from bench, to clinical trials to approval) and about £500 million. Double the amount for monoclonal antibodies. If I'm not mistaken, about 1 in 10 drugs make it through all phases. 
The FDA, and similar authoritative bodies, *has* to be careful about what they approve and what they reject, that's their job. 
Personally, I'm more worried about the complete absence of new antibiotics than any other drug.

Vioxx was approved in 1999, and as most drugs, approval just means the drug enters clinical phase IV, which means that it is monitored on a global and realistic perspective for side effects. Merck had to withdraw it before it got bad publicity for putting people's lives in danger by manufacturing a drug with severe side effects.

And no worries for the big pharmaceutical companies: they still make billions. Sales are not the only thing that brings in money....




Back to Mr Freud...

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## Sweets America

That's strange how some of you claim that Freud's theories were just wrong whereas you cling to scientific theories which you think are right without even realizing that you can never be sure if they are right or not. There is this thing about science today, as long as someone wears a white outfit and manipulates chemicals, they must be right. Ok.  :Wink:

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## Virgil

> That's strange how some of you claim that Freud's theories were just wrong whereas you cling to scientific theories which you think are right without even realizing that you can never be sure if they are right or not. There is this thing about science today, as long as someone wears a white outfit and manipulates chemicals, they must be right. Ok.


Sweets, unless you understand the scientific method, understand the principles of control and verification, then it is impossible to communicate just how silly and unscientific Freud is.

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## Sweets America

> Sweets, unless you understand the scientific method, understand the principles of control and verification, then it is impossible to communicate just how silly and unscientific Freud is.


I was just pointing out how strange it is that people believe very much in something (science, for instance) which is made of theories just like everything else. We have created our own way of understanding the world, a way that science verifies, but maybe this way of understanding the world is just totally wrong. Anyway, I feel I'm stepping onto a big argument with these words, once again... :Wink:  

But, when one says that some theories are silly, maybe one should wonder about the possible silliness of the theories one believes in. I'm no more in favor of Freud than in favor of science, because maybe they're both wrong. We all have personal reasons for believing in this or that, but we have no way of knowing if this or that is true or false, in my opinion. Now of course this is only my opinion and maybe I'm wrong, but I just do not wish to firmly believe in anything because everything might be an illusion. I'm happy with emptiness and I feel freeer like that, detached. I don't know if you see what I mean, but I'm just in the middle, I chose not to decide to believe in anything and I prefer questionning things.

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## tractatus

Friends, he is a science man, and a bit underrated under this thread. He mustnt be really such bad. Even if he did some mistakes, i think a scientist do anything for the sake of science.

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## DapperDrake

> Slightly deviating from Freud here (my apologies  ) but I'd like to comment on this: 
> 
> The pharma industry is indeed having massive trouble in marketing new drugs, but it's not just the FDA's regulations that is the main obstacle. It takes aproximately 20 years to make a new drug (from bench, to clinical trials to approval) and about £500 million. Double the amount for monoclonal antibodies. If I'm not mistaken, about 1 in 10 drugs make it through all phases. 
> The FDA, and similar authoritative bodies, *has* to be careful about what they approve and what they reject, that's their job. 
> Personally, I'm more worried about the complete absence of new antibiotics than any other drug.
> 
> Vioxx was approved in 1999, and as most drugs, approval just means the drug enters clinical phase IV, which means that it is monitored on a global and realistic perspective for side effects. Merck had to withdraw it before it got bad publicity for putting people's lives in danger by manufacturing a drug with severe side effects.
> 
> And no worries for the big pharmaceutical companies: they still make billions. Sales are not the only thing that brings in money....
> ...


Fair points.

With regard Freud I'm afraid my knowledge of psychology is very small, though coincidentally I was flicking my way through a simple psychology text yesterday - any way, from the little I know of Freud I probably shouldn't even venture an opinion but it seem he did have some important ideas and added greatly to the general understanding of human psychology.




> *Sweets*
> 
> I just do believe that anxiety and depression are more chemical in nature than cognitive, but I sure don't want to give the impression that I trust just anyone in a white coat who has a bunch of chemicals in his hand. I don't. I don't trust all drugs or all psychiatrists, etc.


I'm not so sure, from personal experience I can say that finding the right SSRI can be greatly beneficial (provided the dose is high enough) - but I still believe that ultimately most if not all depression has roots in the psyche, having said that of course some people may have more of a "genetic" predisposition psychology aside.
I guess what i'm saying is that depression is a psychological problem with a chemically induced symptom, thus you can treat the symptom with drugs but not cure the problem. That's just personal experience rather than a theory to be honest.

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## Sweets America

> *Sweets*, a man in a white outift manipulating chemicals actually is kind of scary to me. I can't begin to count the number of times my own family doctor has been wrong. Twice he's prescribed the wrong drug for me and I've been the one to catch the mistake, not him.
> 
> I just do believe that anxiety and depression are more chemical in nature than cognitive, but I sure don't want to give the impression that I trust just anyone in a white coat who has a bunch of chemicals in his hand. I don't. I don't trust all drugs or all psychiatrists, etc.


Thanks for your reply, I think you see what I mean and I see what you mean too. As I said, everyone has personal reasons to believe more in chemical reasons or in psychological ones about depression and such. My answer to that, as I said, is just that I don't know, so I will not choose. I think nobody knows. Maybe the cause of depression is both psychological and chemical, or maybe it's something else that we don't know about. Maybe the drugs help to cure the symptom but not the deep cause of it? 

I was surprised also by the difference there seems to be between France and the US in terms of psychoanalysis, because here when I studied clinical psychology, it was really about Freud, his theories were seen as valid by the teachers and we can find a lot of psychoanalists in France. In the US it seems to be different, it's not the first time I hear such opinions about Freud there, so I guess both countries have different views on it? I quit my psychology studies partly because I could not make as if I believed in Freud's theories, I just cannot enclose myself in theories, as interesting as they might sound. It sounded terrible for me to 'cure' patients by basing myself on theories that nobody was sure about.

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## blp

Thanks for clarifying what you were talking about re hysteria, Antiquarian. Other than that, I'm afraid most of what you say looks either poorly substantiated or wrong. Just because something like 'depression', to the extent that it can even be precisely quantified, can be shown to exhibit given chemical characteristics in the brain, it doesn't automatically follow that it can be treated or 'corrected' with other chemicals. And so far, attempts to do so have been singularly imprecise and unsuccessful. 

Sweets, if you found Freud's theories interesting, it's a shame to have given up studying them. No serious academic of a Freudian bent would expect you to 'enclose' yourself in theory. As I said before, psychoanalysis is a work in progress. Freud's ideas are a starting point and, of course, open to question. 

As for the idea of Freud's theories being 'unscientific', it's certainly true that psychoanalysis occupies a hinterland that isn't quite science proper, but the term itself - 'unscientific' - puts them somewhere on the same level as crystal healing and reiki. I rather think - no accident that this thread appears where it does - the hinterland these theories occupy is between philosophy and science. When Freud came along, it had only been a relatively short time since 'natural philosophy' (science) became decisively separated from philosophy - giving rise to a great deal of reputable philosophical work on what, specifically, if anything, might be the role of metaphysical speculation - philosophy. A great deal of this is concerned with epistemology, the question of how we know what we know. Freud, in a sense, is concerned with this too, with the added twist that he is also concerned with how we hide that knowledge from ourselves. And unlike philosophers of mind such as Hume or Kant, he based his theories on a great deal of clinical observation, which means his theories were based on patterns of mental activity he saw repeated numerous times. Reject those theories by all means - as long as you're prepared to decisively reject a great deal of the cannon of western philosophy at the same time. 

Slavoj Zizek does a great riff on Freud's particular approach to theory of knowledge. He cites Donald Rumsfeld's famous (epistemological) quote about how we have known knowns - the things we know we know; known unknowns - the things we know we don't know; unknown unknowns - the things we don't know we don't know. But he points out that Rumsfeld missed out a crucial fourth category: unknown knowns - the things we don't know we know; to whit, the Freudian unconscious.

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## DapperDrake

> *DapperDrake and Sweets*, I think anxiety and depression are chemical or hormonal in origin, but if someone suffers from them for any length of time, of course there will be cognitive problems that could benefit by talking to a _very good_ psychologist or psychiatrist. I don't think medication or cognitive therapy alone is the exclusive answer, at least not for most people. I think most people who are anxious or depressed or both need a mix of some medication (the right one can be difficult to find) and cognitive therapy.


Freudian denial perhaps..  :Tongue:  

/joke - sorry I couldn't resist.

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## blp

Denial? Well, this Freudian is tempted to say so.  :Wink:  I mean, you don't want to debate Freud? One has to wonder what you're doing in the Freud thread then. Following the dictates of some secret wish, perhaps?  :Biggrin: 

Seriously though, 'The right [medication] can be difficult to find'? This doesn't really make the so-called scientific approach sound any more precise (or _safe_) than the talking cure. What's the patient supposed to do? Experiment on themselves like lab rat - and hope they don't die, become impotent or lose their hair in the process?

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## blp

Well, I'm in analysis and I find it incredibly pleasant and helpful. I do think there are probably some pretty bad therapists and analysts about though. 

I'm afraid it's not true that drugs that act on brain chemistry carry no danger, however. Unless you don't think death perhaps from suicide constitutes danger.

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## blp

OK, I admit it. At least 'guilt' has the potential to bring us back into Freudian territory.  :Biggrin: 

Like I said, I'm sure there are some bloody awful analysts and therapists out there. I don't think that really invalidates Freudian theory at all, though. Every theory and system, no matter how solid, can be undermined in practice (and usually is) by stupidity and corruption.

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## blazeofglory

Freud has lost value, for ideas evolve eternally.

Of course he had added something to the body of philosophy and psychology. But with time better and better ideas coming up, he got outshone.

Marx and Freud have exerted great influences over human thought, and now they have little relevance. 

For man always advances defying the vastness of time and space. 

Let us not be tangled by his obsolete ideas. I value him, but not to the extent of totally be submissive to him recklessly and critically.

Indeed he was a starter of particular ideology and ideologies evolve get refined with time. Everything goes on changing, evolving eternally.

Even in a couple of centuries our patterns of thinking, beliefs have undergone great amounts of transformations. 

Our value systems have undergone a great change.

One can figure out the relevance of Freud and particularly his theories on sex and its supremacy.

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## Scheherazade



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## Sweets America

*Blp*, in my studies, the teachers really firmly believed in Freud's theories and they would have found it horrible if I had told them that it sounded strange for me to see someone believe so much in something which no one knows if it's true or not. Well, believing in itself might be ok, but curing patients with it is not, for me. So, yes, the theories were interesting, but there was no way I would have made my career out of them. But this was not the only reason why I quit, I quit because I had forced myself to go into those studies and I was smothered in them with people around who smothered me too. So, one day, I decided to say goodbye to the studies and the people in them and to go away and live the life I wanted to live.

I've seen psychologists myself, and they never helped me. That doesn't mean there are no good psychologists, but well, I haven't found them. I wanted my psychoanalyst to help me talk about important matters but she never did that, she only made me talk about banal things instead of hearing the cry in me which wanted to talk about difficult matters. She never gave me advice, I paid a lot of money for nothing. When I talked about some things, she even laughed at me as if I were plainly stupid. 
I think, perhaps, I was also disappointed because I thought I would find someone like Freud, as interesting, and I found someone very banal and unhelpful.
I remember also this pseudo-psychologist who saw me when I was 6. I was almost mute, refused contact with people, always crying, and all this pseudo-psychologist said was that I had no problem. Ok nice.

Oh, *Antiquarian*, maybe the causes of depression vary among people? I don't know. For my part, I would be tempted to think that the causes of the depression I had were psychological because I started my life on this planet by being bullied and humiliated by humans, so I grew up with the feeling that I could not trust them and I just did not fit in. So at one point I had a depression with great anxiety. I ended up accepting that I didn't need to have much contact with humans anyway and that it was not a bad thing to be like that and I'm happier alone. A moment comes when you've got to accept who you are and to stop letting people make you feel ashamed.

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## Scheherazade

> Hilarious. We really are all a boy named Charlie Brown.


Really? I am more inclined to think that there is a bit of Lucy in all of us!  :Wink:

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## blp

> Hilarious. We really are all a boy named Charlie Brown. Love him.
> 
> 
> 
> True. While I think medication is sometimes necessary, I do admit it is fraught with dangers (but many benefits as well). As for me, well, I wouldn't mind seeing a very good psychiatrist myself. The people in my family are very judgmental and it would be good to talk to someone who would be completely objective and who would be trying to steer me in a manner that would lead to the most healthful living possible.
> 
> But Freudian or not (and I still don't care for Freud) really good therapists can be hard to find. You're lucky, I think, that you did find one.


Yes, I agree, I'm lucky. I live in England as you do, so maybe the organisation I got mine from could help you too if you're ever interested. My sister went to one from the same organisation, having tried several other therapists in America, and said he was the first who'd been able to help her. I don't think I'm supposed to promote organisations (not that I'm a spokesperson or anything), so PM me if you like. They're Freudians though (via Jacques Lacan). And, of course, just because know of two good ones from there doesn't guarantee they're all good. 

I think what you say about your family and what Sweets says about bullying indicates, in a very basic way, the importance of Freud's talking cure innovation. The concrete ways in which life can hurt us (and the sometimes less tangible ways we can hurt ourselves) need to be understood through discussion. We are not at fault (in the simple sense, say, of having too negative an attitude) and neither is our brain chemistry. To suggest that one's problem comes down to something as simplistic as this is to compound the sufferer's isolation.

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## Sweets America

> *Sweets*, I would never for one second think that wouldn't make depression worse, but some people seem to never get depressed, no matter what happens. I don't have the answers, but I think people should do what works for them, as long as it isn't hurting them. If medication helps and doesn't hurt, they should take it, at least for a time. If seeing a psychiatrist helps, then they should do that. It's terrible to grow up like that. We had some of that in my family as well. I wish you well in overcoming the traumatic times, and I know firsthand how traumatic they can be.


Thanks. I'm ok, I'm doing way better today, I've decided that I enjoyed being an outcast, somehow.  :Tongue:  Anyway, I'm really happy with my life as it is now, it took time but I still found some great human beings around even if I keep being closer to dogs. That's just the way I am.

I think I agree with you, every person should do what suits them. My regular doctor advised me to take medication at first, to feel better, and then when I felt ready, to go and talk to a psychologist. Some people say that if you only take medication, then when you stop it the bad things will come back so you really need to deal with the problem in depth by talking about it. That's understandable, but I think that somehow, I just managed to get out of my problems by myself in the end, and talking to psychologists didn't help me because I was waiting for something else. 

I think it helped me more to think by myself and discuss with my mother. It baffled me when I told my psychoanalyst that I thought my mother and I might need to talk together with a psychologist because it would help to have a third person listening, and my psychologist laughed at the idea. That's terrible, I think. Even my mother recognized that our relationship was problematic, and that psychoanalyst just refused to do her job but she still took 56 euros after 30 minutes talking :Biggrin:  
With only 4 years of psychology studies, I had seen things that this psychoanalyst refused to see. So well, when you find yourself with people like that, it's better to manage by yourself.  :Wink:  

That reminds me also of that psychologist I had worked with, who told me that it was better to be mean with the patients sometimes!!! Seriously, how crazy is that?  :Eek:

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## Scorpio Ascendant

Freud was a madman who led people to believe he's a genius.

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## blp

> Freud was a madman who led people to believe he's a genius.


What makes you think that?

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## Scorpio Ascendant

> What makes you think that?



His concept of psychosexual development: Oedipus complex and Electra complex? Him continuing to use cocaine as a stimulant and analgesic even after it cost him his friend's life: Fleischl-Marxow? His ludicrous dearm theory? C'mon.

.

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## Virgil

> His concept of psychosexual development: Oedipus complex and Electra complex? Him continuing to use cocaine as a stimulant and analgesic even after it cost him his friend's life: Fleischl-Marxow? His ludicrous dearm theory? C'mon.
> 
> .


Hear hear! He was a fraud. There is no scientific basis to anything he proclaims. The thing I disagree with you Taima is that he was not a madman. He was a pathetically poor scientist. Not only did he not have any real scientific groundings but he had no moral principles that his scientific claims could hurt and kill people. But he was not mad enough to understand how to become popular and create the illusion that his findings are scientifically based.

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## blp

> His concept of psychosexual development: Oedipus complex and Electra complex? Him continuing to use cocaine as a stimulant and analgesic even after it cost him his friend's life: Fleischl-Marxow? His ludicrous dearm theory? C'mon.
> 
> .


Sorry, I'm still in the dark. You say all this as if it's just obvious what's wrong with it and therefore clear that Freud isn't worth . Even about the cocaine bit, you don't really provide enough information for anyone unfamiliar with the story to know for sure what it's about. I do know, because I've just looked it up, that Fleischl-Marxow was already addicted to morphine and heroin - without Freud's help - and that Freud hoped to wean him off with cocaine. The whole thing sounds similar to the kind of pharmaceutical debates that are still going on in the medical profession, actually - and that, somewhat ironically, have already been the subject of some debate in this thread. 

Can you give me a bit more detail about your objections to his theories in particular?

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## Scorpio Ascendant

Virgil, blp


I happen to believe that madness tends to beget creativity. So it's not totally an insult to say "Freud is a madman." I'm assuming that most of us here discussing Freud's theories have, at least, read something of what I pointed out. I didn't mean to be abstruse. 

The point, in short, is that for Freud to tell me that I sexually "desire my father" and my brother "desires my mother", then he is got to be either lascivious or insane. That was a partial epitome of his concept of psychosexual development, which I find quite disturbing.


.

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## white camellia

"When Freud was 80, more than 200 scholars and writers around the world signed their names on the letter of greeting. Thomas Mann read it in the presence of Freud. Einstein called him 'the greatest mentor' in his message of greeting...A philosopher from ancient Greece emphasized 'man, know thyself' but we had never extended to our secrets until the time of Freud and his pupil Jung when we began to realize the lack of understanding of one's psyche as compared to that of the physical world studied in astronomy and physics...The best works of art and literature are often associated with Jung's concept of the collective unconscious [my trans.]." The contemporary Chinese scholar also commented that "Don't think Freud is a flippant old man because he always talks about 'sex', he's just an epoch-making master of..."

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## Redzeppelin

I think Freud had his finger on some things that were much larger than his ability to understand; he identified some things in a very compelling way - but he did not see the big picture (which I think Jung did a better job of doing). 

I might take Freud more seriously if he hadn't dismissed religion wholesale as a neurosis. That is a serious misunderstanding.

Besides - sex is important (that's an understatement, to say the least) but not everything is about sex.

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## Sweets America

> Hear hear! He was a fraud. There is no scientific basis to anything he proclaims. The thing I disagree with you Taima is that he was not a madman. He was a pathetically poor scientist. Not only did he not have any real scientific groundings but he had no moral principles that his scientific claims could hurt and kill people. But he was not mad enough to understand how to become popular and create the illusion that his findings are scientifically based.


Here we go again, morality, science... My question always is: why would science be the supreme authority? That's like a dogma we ought to believe in. I just cannot understand how someone could put some theories into question and firmly say that some other theories are just true. I just cannot understand how someone can believe in science so much and why science would be the thing with which we would have to measure everything in this world?! I like questionning everything, and it just amazes me that some people don't realize that their attitude towards science is the exact same attitude as the attitude they laugh at about people who believe in Freud or in anything else. You believe in science, for personal reasons, but you should accept that science is just one way of seeing the world.

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## Nightshade

Freud... well I dont hold with alot of his ( lets say most of actually ) his theories ( i mean the little hans ase for one his research methods were just shoddiy) and he geralised waaaaaaaaay too much. However taken as a base alot of his ideas do have merit I think, for example free word association the importance of dreams and of course the id . 

I once read a really intresting book it was called what freud really said by David Stafford-Clark well I never finished it, his theories were slightly _too_  disturbing and I somehow lost the book... which can all be inturpreted in freudian terms that it was alittle to close to the truth and so I delbiratly 'lost' the book so I woudnt have to deal with it... in fact it all made a very good essay on freudian psychology. but yeah  :Rolleyes: 

And another thing about freud is there is definetly an entertinment factor to be had if you decide to start anaklysing the media with a freudian slant, you can never quite be sure how much is intential but it can definetly be amusing.
 :Biggrin:

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## Sweets America

I was thinking also, that some people think that Freud's theories could not be accurate because they were too disturbing. But, who said that something was wrong because it was disturbing? 
I don't know, about the Oedipus complex, for instance, if I think of desiring my father right now, the idea does not appeal to me at all, but in the meantime I have a lot of dreams in which I have sex with my father and I actually enjoy it! And of course when I wake up the disturbing feeling comes back. So we can wonder about all that...

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## blp

> Virgil, blp
> 
> 
> I happen to believe that madness tends to beget creativity. So it's not totally an insult to say "Freud is a madman." I'm assuming that most of us here discussing Freud's theories have, at least, read something of what I pointed out. I didn't mean to be abstruse. 
> 
> The point, in short, is that for Freud to tell me that I sexually "desire my father" and my brother "desires my mother", then he is got to be either lascivious or insane. That was a partial epitome of his concept of psychosexual development, which I find quite disturbing.
> 
> 
> .


Oh pet! A lot of things are disturbing. But so far, in the whole history of rhetoric, that hasn't been an accepted synonym for 'untrue'. 

Even if you can assume you're talking to people who have some knowledge or understanding of Freud, you still need to say a bit about why you find his theories untenable. Just listing them won't have much effect on someone who agrees with them.

***
_Edit_

Oh, Sweets, I see I've just made the same point as you.




> Here we go again, morality, science... My question always is: why would science be the supreme authority? That's like a dogma we ought to believe in. I just cannot understand how someone could put some theories into question and firmly say that some other theories are just true. I just cannot understand how someone can believe in science so much and why science would be the thing with which we would have to measure everything in this world?! I like questionning everything, and it just amazes me that some people don't realize that their attitude towards science is the exact same attitude as the attitude they laugh at about people who believe in Freud or in anything else. You believe in science, for personal reasons, but you should accept that science is just one way of seeing the world.


I think there's a more specific point here, which is that when you're dealing with processes of the mind, precise science is an incredibly tall order. As American philosopher Ken Wilber pointed out in a Salon interview yesterday, even when we wire up brains and watch certain areas light up in response to certain stimulation, it's practically impossible to say precisely how what we're seeing correlates to thought, or discover what thoughts precisely are occurring. 

This isn't to say that we won't come to a better understanding eventually. We are in a process of development. This is perhaps the fallacy of using 'unscientific' as a blanket term of dismissal - as if science itself is at a point of complete understanding, against which all activity can be measured. To be more precise: as if anything that is not _completely_ understood is unscientific. When in fact, the ongoing process of nearly always partial understanding is science. 

As I tried to point out before, the processes of the mind present us with a philosophical problem precisely to the extent that it is difficult to be scientifically precise about them. No accident that, from Descartes to Kant at least, the incipient split between science and philosophy leaves philosophers inquiring into the nature of their own - and our own - processes of cognition. As I said before, anyone who wants to reject Freud as 'unscientific' should be prepared, in all honesty, to reject this entire philosophical tradition on the same grounds. 

There is a vast difference between the avowedly unscientific approach of many alternative therapists and that of Freud and his followers. The former, when questioned about how their activities are supposed to work, frequently aver that they prefer not to inquire into the mystery (of reflexology, crystal healing, reiki etc.), some things are simply beyond our ken etc. 

Freud, by contrast, was always 'inquiring into the mystery'. He treated his own practice as a work in progress, continually seeking a better understanding, developing his theories and activities according to the data painstakingly accumulated in his consultations. Even the very early stages of his practice, when he was moving from hypnotism to the pure talking cure, show this. He is scientific to the extent that he changes his theories and activities in response to the available data.

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## Virgil

> Here we go again, morality, science... My question always is: why would science be the supreme authority? That's like a dogma we ought to believe in.


Because it meets the test of experience. If you don't believe in it, don't see a doctor when you're sick, see a witchdoctor. Next time you want to get somewhere, don't take a train or a car, ride a horse. Do you wash your clothes at a river or do you use a washermachine? Next time you're on an airplane look down from the window and tell me whether you're applying science or riding on a magic carpet. 




> I just cannot understand how someone could put some theories into question and firmly say that some other theories are just true.


It's called the scientific method. Have you ever heard of the Enlightenment? It's amazing to me how some people can take science to it's apparent end and declare atheism, and yet still believe in witchdoctors such as Freud.




> I just cannot understand how someone can believe in science so much and why science would be the thing with which we would have to measure everything in this world?!


What is the alternative? Do you believe in seances? Do you believe in astrology? Do you believe in someone reading your palm? Do you believe in praying over a sick person for a cure? Do you believe in laying on a couch and having someone doing free word association and that's somehow suppose to get at your psychosis?  :FRlol:  Come on.




> I like questionning everything, and it just amazes me that some people don't realize that their attitude towards science is the exact same attitude as the attitude they laugh at about people who believe in Freud or in anything else. You believe in science, for personal reasons, but you should accept that science is just one way of seeing the world.


I'll repeat myself, because it meets the test of experience through the scientific method.

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## blp

> I might take Freud more seriously if he hadn't dismissed religion wholesale as a neurosis. That is a serious misunderstanding.


Well it certainly seems to bring out the obsessional in some people.




> What is the alternative? Do you believe in seances? Do you believe in astrology? Do you believe in someone reading your palm? Do you believe in praying over a sick person for a cure? Do you believe in laying on a couch and having someone doing free word association and that's somehow suppose to get at your psychosis?  Come on.


The device 'come on' appears here for the second time in this thread. I'm still at a loss to know what it's supposed to mean. 

If you've got such a thing for the enlightenment, Virge, don't hold back. Give us some properly rigorous, logical, englightenment-style argument. I realise you probably missed it and it's easy to do, but I've anticipated your attempt to lump Freud in with merely superstitious practices such as the ones you mention. Do keep up, old boy!

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## Virgil

> The device 'come on' appears here for the second time in this thread. I'm still at a loss to know what it's supposed to mean. 
> 
> If you've got such a thing for the enlightenment, Virge, don't hold back. Give us some properly rigorous, logical, englightenment-style argument. I realise you probably missed it and it's easy to do, but I've anticipated your attempt to lump Freud in with merely superstitious practices such as the ones you mention. Do keep up, old boy!


Don't believe me. Read Karl Popper, old boy.  :Wink:

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## blp

Er...which bit of Popper? Something on Freud? 

To employ a phrase of your own, 'come on'. Popper isn't here to respond directly to my arguments. Why don't you tell us what you think he might say? You can't just vaguely cite entire oeuvres and assure us that they back you up.

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## Sweets America

> Because it meets the test of experience. If you don't believe in it, don't see a doctor when you're sick, see a witchdoctor. Next time you want to get somewhere, don't take a train or a car, ride a horse. Do you wash your clothes at a river or do you use a washermachine? Next time you're on an airplane look down from the window and tell me whether you're applying science or riding on a magic carpet.


I don't see what this has to do with the subject. You listed things which were built thanks to science, and so what? It does not mean that the whole world can be understood through your science. 

I cannot understand this attitude of people who firmly believe in something and let no room for the eventuality that the thing might be false. Or maybe they are just scared of thinking that it might be false, because in that case, the whole world they have enclosed themselves in, with all its theories which they take for granted, would just collapse and some people cannot stand this thought.
I do not reject science, Virgil, I say that science might be right but also that it might be wrong, because I am aware that my way of seeing the world might be totally false, and that's a not a problem for me, I perfer having an attitude of openness than one of closed-mindedness. I am not afraid of blank spaces and voids and ignorance, because I know that my perceptions and ideas are just possible perceptions among a lot of other possible perceptions. I will never close the doors around myself.
Yes, I go and see a doctor when I'm sick, because I've seen that it helped, but maybe there are a lot of other ways of curing illnesses and that I'm just not aware of them. And it's not a problem for me not to know. I know that I don't know, I just ask questions and I don't care if I have no answers, because anyway, I'll take any answer as a mere possibility.





> It's called the scientific method. Have you ever heard of the Enlightenment? It's amazing to me how some people can take science to it's apparent end and declare atheism, and yet still believe in witchdoctors such as Freud.


Yes, it's called the scientific method, and that's just one method among others, no problem with that. No problem either with the fact that this scientific method might be all wrong. Of course it might also be right. I'm just detaching myself from the world I live in, at least I'm trying because I'm sure there are things that I take for granted too, just like you do with science.
I never said I believed in Freud, you know. I find his theories interesting, but I don't need to believe in anything, I stay open. I cannot believe since I don't know if it's true or not, and believing would mean stopping to question, and I don't want to do that.
The fact that you call Freud a witchdoctor, really, with this condescending tone.... as if you knew for sure that his theories are wrong. That amazes me. How can you know for sure? This is my question. How? Because you say it's unscientific, ok, but how can you know for sure that science is the basis of this world? You just don't know. You are only one human being with your limitations, just like any other human on this planet, and you cannot pretend knowing the ultimate truth. But, well, since I wish to stay open, I will say that maybe you know the ultimate truth, after all.  :Wink:  




> What is the alternative? Do you believe in seances? Do you believe in astrology? Do you believe in someone reading your palm? Do you believe in praying over a sick person for a cure? Do you believe in laying on a couch and having someone doing free word association and that's somehow suppose to get at your psychosis?  Come on.


Yes, come on, as Blp says.  :Smile:  You speak as if it were obvious. That's crazy. And once again you're condescending. Praying might help to cure a person, who knows?! Miracles might be possible. If you still ask me what I believe in, that means you really don't understand what I mean in all my messages. I don't 'believe', I question. I don't need to have a solid ground under my feet.
Once again you cling to science, because you don't realize you're enclosed in this particular way of seeing the world. It's logical that things get proven scientifically if we always refer to one way of seeing the world, then the pieces of the puzzle match each other. But, what if the scientific method were not the only one to measure everything?

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## Redzeppelin

> Well it certainly seems to bring out the obsessional in some people.


That's true - but not unique to religion. Work, sex, food, love and a whole host of generally positive things are capable of becoming "obsessions" and causing really disruptive, unhealthy behaviors in our lives. Freud based much of his theories upon sex and its powerful influence upon our lives, but didn't seem to feel the need to relegate it to neurosis wholesale - this despite the reality that I think way more people do ridiculous, unhealthy things due to their obsessive behaviors relating to sex. Compared to sex, religion as neurosis isn't even in the same ballpark.

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## blp

> I don't see what this has to do with the subject. You listed things which were built thanks to science, and so what? It does not mean that the whole world can be understood through your science.


This is a complicated proposition, Sweets. You and I are really coming at this from different angles, though with areas of overlap. Let me try to break it down:

I'm trying to argue that Freud's process of inquiry _was_ scientific, simply in that he based his theories on long-term clinical observations. 

If a practice is agreed only to be science if it fits into the standard school categories, physics, chemistry, biology and/or mathematics, then it's true that Freud is _not_ science and it is also true, as you say, Sweets, that there are many things that cannot be understood by science - psychology being an excellent _prima facie_ example.

Virgil might argue (I'm going to have to imagine what he would imagine Popper saying since he's so far not agreeing to do so himself  :Wink:  Unless he pops back while I'm writing) that Freud is not scientific because his theories are not _disprovable_ - this being Popper's famous criteria. This is fairly tough to get past. We know that, for instance, water expands as it freezes and we know this because we can repeatedly conduct an experiment that would disprove it if it wasn't so. Conversely, it's virtually impossible, by Popper's standard, to make a scientific statement about the existence of God because we can no more disprove his existence than prove it. And with analytic theory, no such experiments seem possible, even if it provides more concrete evidence for its efficacy than God does. Sometimes it seems to work in practice, sometimes not. 

Unfortunately, a fact already touched on in this thread, strictly scientific medicine suffers from the same apparent imprecision. Sometimes it works, sometimes, perhaps even more disastrously (thalidomide babies; prozac induced psychosis) than psychoanalysis, it doesn't. 

So are both these things beyond the reach of science? I would say not. Popper's criteria, while it may be an excellent ideal towards which to work or guideline for inquiries, seems obviously too limiting as a definition of scientific inquiry. Science is the discovery both of Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns (e.g. single cell organisms; the theory of relativity) and the process of explicating observable reality (why does day turn into night? how are babies made? etc.) through both theoretical models and the observance of empirical data (real stuff you can see) not necessarily at the same time. 

If we accept this definition of science, then even crystal healers, mediums and chakra cleansers are engaging in scientific inquiry; it's just that they are doing so incredibly _badly_. To whit. they're engaging with phenomena that they claim have concrete, palpable applications (wellness, communication with the dead, cleansing etc.), but refusing to investigate their machinations; which seems odd, given that such investigations might well lead to improvements in practice. Science, duly, is investigating these activities, not to rubbish them, but to work out the nature of their effects. 

The fact that a great deal of these researches, at some point or another, deal with the placebo effect, has two potential applications for psychoanalysis. One is the possibility that this is psychoanalysis' effect. 

And to appropriate the Lacanian technique of the interrupted session, that seems like a good place to leave things for now.

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## Sweets America

Thanks for this post, Blp. But my problem is that Virgil, for instance, says that since Freud's theories cannot be proven by science, then they are false. And that's my problem, because to me science is not necessarily the basis to prove everything. Science is something that has been built by humans to understand the world around. But I just want to detach myself from that because I don't want to say that science is necessarily THE GREAT METHOD.

They say that they base on experiments, things they see, but I don't see why we should say that what we see is the reality. Maybe our senses lead us on the wrong path. And maybe those things about mediums, talking with the dead and such just cannot be proven by scientific methods because science might just not be the right tool to prove it, maybe it has limitations and also the fact that we don't see something or that we cannot measure it doesn't mean that it's not there. Human beings might be limited too.

I don't see why God's existence should be proven by science in order to be considered as true. I don't know why science and observations would be the ultimate truth, because those observations are made by humans with their human ways of seeing the world. And it's not necessarily because we see patterns appearing that things are true, I don't know, I cannot enclose myself into that. You see, taking science as the basis is as if we said 'if this person says it's true, then it must be true', it's believing in a restrained thing. We have invented science and said it was the basis, but what if our brains had thought differently, what if we had created a totally diferent method to state on the truth of things?

I don't know, but the human brains, how they perceive things, are not necessarily right. I think nothing can ever be proven. Even my own existence, I mean, maybe that's just a dream. But that's ok for me not to know if I exist or not. I don't know, but this whole idea of 'proof' sounds strange to me. I am just not sure of anything. There is always a risk of errors.

I will never laugh at mediums and such, because who the hell am I to say that they are frauds? I don't know anything, that would be so condescending to say that ghosts, for instance, don't exist just because I didn't see them. I just don't know, and nobody knows, even if the whole world is trying as much as it can to build ways of understanding itself. To me, it's as crazy to say that God exists as to say that he doesn't. Because even the proofs that one can have might be false, we never know. So I'm happy not to know, I don't really care, I welcome any possibility.

Ah, maybe it's just my mind which works a strange way. :Tongue:

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## blp

Sweets, if you haven't already, you might find it helpful to look at some of the philosophers I've mentioned, especially Kant. Not that it's easy (I'm still at an absolutely rudimentary stage with it), but the questions you're discussing, about how we know and whether there can be a thought beyond science (meta-physics, literally, after physics) have been gone into exhaustively by him. 

To be necessarily simplistic, however, if something is 'provable', it's science. This is not just some construct. You seem to resent that idea, as if it's somehow oppressive. I think it's quite the opposite. The history of science is a large large part of the history of radical thought. Its greatest practitioners, including Freud, are profoundly unconventional thinkers whose work undermines conventional constructs (e.g. the world as centre of the universe). Science for them was not the great METHOD, it was a journey _without_ the certainties of method, sometimes built on strange, visionary, counter-intuitive leaps and sometimes undertaken at great personal risk, from ridicule to death by execution.

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## Orionsbelt

To say that Freud was not Scientific would be to deny the evidence. He was indeed a scientist. He employed the ideas of forming a hypothesis (id,ego, superego), testing it and modifying it (Oedipus, Electra complex) in order to model the observed phenomena. What is different is he was observing human behavior and attempting to construct a mechanism, not unlike current atom smashing, to explain it. This is the hallmark of the classic mind. You might accuse him of biting off more than he could chew.

There are two things that occurred to me as I read most of this very long conversation. One is that we do not understand nature as well as we claim. We have constructed accurate models, analogies, or formulations that we can use to predict natural behavior. Gravity for example. What we understand are the symbols that are our representations for what we see. I don’t think we can make any deeper claim. Back to Plato again…. . Don’t mistake the painting for the real deal. 

If you presume that everything in nature must obey natural law (almost circular) then even our thoughts must exhibit some mark in the natural world. Otherwise they would be “un-natural” (any resemblance is purely coincidental) :Biggrin:  . We have no idea what life/thought really is other than our general observations that dead things don’t seem to move much. We can infer that some force seems to exhibit itself by complex molecular manipulations in a variety of ways. We understand very little actually. We have also observed that we can mess with the way this force exhibits itself by messing with the chemicals. We have no evidence to conclude that this has effected the original mover in any way. Is this really such and insight. If I throw a brick into an airplane engine can you predict what will happen to the engine?

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## Scorpio Ascendant

> Oh pet! A lot of things are disturbing. But so far, in the whole history of rhetoric, that hasn't been an accepted synonym for 'untrue'.



Oh, hold it right there. Would you be kind enough and show me when/where/ how/ did science prove that to be true? Are you suggesting that people REALLY DO desire incest but repress that desire, as Freud puts it? And that if a child came to me complaining about his teacher sexually molesting him, then I should not forget he's just a perverted child because Freud says "childhood sexual abuse are based on imagination more than on real events"?

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## Taliesin

Freuds greatest achievement is, of course, that you can use his theories to embarrass people and verbally abuse them in a somewhat sadistic way.
My favorite technique is taking something the other party said or did and then fabulate some strange construction using symbols and connections and whatnot, so that, in the end, it is shown that a) they want to have sex with their mother/father/both b)has anal or oral fixation, c)has penis envy/fear of castration or d)whatever strange, perverse and embarrassing idea I can come up with at the moment.

To be serious (bah!) on the subject - Freud doesn't seem very credible to me, but I have to credit his historical importance, at least -he influenced greatly the development of psychology, even if he was wrong. 
Anyhow, there are a lot of schools of psychology and different viewpoints on subjects, so I am not very certain about the effectiveness of the psychoanalysis. According to Wikipedia, though, "a 2005 review of randomized controlled trials found no studies demonstrating the effectiveness of psychoanalytic treatment but did find that some less intensive psychodynamic treatments appear to be effective in the treatment of some specific psychiatric disorders" - apparently not useful, but psychodynamic treatments happen to be - which, also, are partly developed by Freud. So he isn't total garbage. 


Since I haven't studied the subject much, I shall now shut up.

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## blp

> Oh, hold it right there. Would you be kind enough and show me when/where/ how/ did science prove that to be true? Are you suggesting that people REALLY DO desire incest but repress that desire, as Freud puts it? And that if a child came to me complaining about his teacher sexually molesting him, then I should not forget he's just a perverted child because Freud says "childhood sexual abuse are based on imagination more than on real events"?


Aren't you reading a bit too much into what I said? My remark - that the mere fact of something being disturbing wasn't enough to rule it out of court - was in response to a remark of yours suggesting that it was. It wasn't intended as an endorsement of Freud per se. 

Beyond that, I think the substance of a lot of the discussion has been that science is not a guarantor of absolute certainty. Where did science 'prove' these things? As I understand it, Freud felt from his copious observations of patients that he had reason to believe them. 

Regarding the specific instances you raise, well, don't you think that if someone did desire incest they would be likely to repress it, given the intense societal taboo against incest? I have had enough dreams about the subject myself to be at least a little open to the idea. Freud's accounts of dream analysis suggest he encountered what he believed to be this wish frequently.

I have a problem with your hypothetical situation because, from what I can gather, the majority of children who are sexually abused don't tell anyone about it, at least not at the time. I don't have a definite answer because the question's too hard. What would you do? Simply believe the child without question and take steps that would almost certainly ruin the teacher's life?

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## Nightshade

> Freuds greatest achievement is, of course, that you can use his theories to embarrass people and verbally abuse them in a somewhat sadistic way.
> My favorite technique is taking something the other party said or did and then fabulate some strange construction using symbols and connections and whatnot, so that, in the end, it is shown that a) they want to have sex with their mother/father/both b)has anal or oral fixation, c)has penis envy/fear of castration or d)whatever strange, perverse and embarrassing idea I can come up with at the moment.
> 
> .


I thought I invented that game  :Eek2:

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## DapperDrake

> It's called the scientific method. Have you ever heard of the Enlightenment?  It's amazing to me how some people can take science to it's apparent end and declare atheism, and yet still believe in witchdoctors such as Freud.


There are a lot of big posts above me and I don't have time to read them so forgive me if i'm repeating something here..

Virgil - I agree that scientific method is _the_ best tool we have for discovering how things work, anything in the physical universe can be analysed , measured, tested etc.. and in physics, chemistry, biology etc. things can be measure precisely and test results are repeatable.
The trouble with psychology is that results are not repeatable to the same standard, things cannot be measured precisely - every human being is unique, and the human brain and psyche is immensely complex. 

Psychology is not an exact science that is my point, and Freud (from what I can tell, i'm no expert on Freud) used empirical methods, i.e. he based theories on observation. I believe that because psychology is not an exact science its forgiveable, and indeed necessary, to make leaps of theorisation on observation and anecdote (making intuitive connections between cases if you like) because otherwise perhaps we would get nowhere fast?

This is why Freud is great, because he made leaps and bounds, sure some of his theory was wrong but a lot of it seems to be valuable in therapy, which, even if it isn't right is the next best thing.

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## Scorpio Ascendant

> Aren't you reading a bit too much into what I said? My remark - that the mere fact of something being disturbing wasn't enough to rule it out of court - was in response to a remark of yours suggesting that it was. It wasn't intended as an endorsement of Freud per se. 
> 
> Beyond that, I think the substance of a lot of the discussion has been that science is not a guarantor of absolute certainty. Where did science 'prove' these things? As I understand it, Freud felt from his copious observations of patients that he had reason to believe them. 
> 
> Regarding the specific instances you raise, well, don't you think that if someone did desire incest they would be likely to repress it, given the intense societal taboo against incest? I have had enough dreams about the subject myself to be at least a little open to the idea. Freud's accounts of dream analysis suggest he encountered what he believed to be this wish frequently.
> 
> I have a problem with your hypothetical situation because, from what I can gather, the majority of children who are sexually abused don't tell anyone about it, at least not at the time. I don't have a definite answer because the question's too hard. What would you do? Simply believe the child without question and take steps that would almost certainly ruin the teacher's life?



All I said was that it's insane, it's madness. But now that you mention it, it is definitely untrue, you may add, besides disturbing. Unless someone here wants to prove Freud right, only on one condition: this person would have to be * normal *, sane and with no psychological issues. 

I don't care what Freud thinks if he can't back it up with rock solid evidence. I don't care if he craved his mother in his childhood. Which is no secret to anyone who is familiar with Freud's biography. What I care about is this: if you want to make *scientific* theories, don't insult yourself and base them on your personal issues only, and consider proving them scientifically. Otherwise they remain untrue untill proven true. And the unture usually holds no value. 

As far as I'm concerned, science is different than religion. Science requires physical and logical proofs, where religion doesn't require any as much as it requires mere submission to a bunch of beliefs, and/or spiritual devotion. 

You certainly seem to be in the gray area of the subject. I strongly recommend you read his Oedipus complex where he shows how strongly he believes that people (like you and I) desire incest during their psychosexual development. 

We are talking here about the children who _do_ talk about their sexual abuse. Am I supposed to discard it, pause and think "Freud"? No, I would absolutely take it into consideration and investigate. If it turns out the child is telling the truth, which is likely the case, the life of that certain teacher would be insignificant. 


.

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## Virgil

Ok, so since this continues to be a hot thread and blp requests it let me flesh out my complete thoughts on Freud and his lack of scientific method. First just read through this list of criticism from the Wiki thread on Freud.




> Critical reactions
> Although Freud's theories were influential, they came under widespread criticism during his lifetime and afterward. A paper by Lydiard H. Horton, read in 1915 at a joint meeting of the American Psychological Association and the New York Academy of Sciences, called Freud's dream theory "dangerously inaccurate" and noted that "rank confabulations...appear to hold water, psychoanalytically" [21]. Peter D. Kramer, a psychiatrist and faculty member of Brown Medical School, said "I'm afraid [Freud] doesn't hold up very well at all. It almost feels like a personal betrayal to say that. But every particular is wrong: the universality of the Oedipus complex, penis envy, infantile sexuality." A 2006 article in Newsweek magazine called him "history's most debunked doctor."[22]
> Freud's theories are often criticized for not being real science.[23] This objection was raised by Karl Popper, who claimed that all proper scientific theories must be potentially falsifiable. Popper argued that no experiment or observation could ever falsify Freud's theories of psychology (e.g. someone who denies having an Oedipal complex is interpreted as repressing it), and thus they could not be considered scientific.[24] Author Richard Webster characterized Freud's work as a "complex pseudo-science"[25].
> H. J. Eysenck claims that Freud 'set psychiatry back one hundred years', consistently mis-diagnosed his patients, fraudulently misrepresented case histories and that "what is true in Freud is not new and what is new in Freud is not true".[26]
> Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen claims that "The truth is that Freud knew from the very start that Fleischl, Anna O. and his 18 patients were not cured, and yet he did not hesitate to build grand theories on these non-existent foundations...he disguised fragments of his self-analysis as objective cases, that he concealed his sources, that he conveniently antedated some of his analyses, that he sometimes attributed to his patients free associations that he himself made up, that he inflated his therapeutic successes, that he slandered his opponents."[2]
> Among adherents of Freudian thought, a frequently criticized aspect of Freud's belief system is his model of psychosexual development, including Freud's claim that infants are sexual beings.[citation needed] Others have accepted Freud's expanded notion of sexuality, but have argued that this pattern of development is not universal, nor necessary for the development of a healthy adult.[citation needed] Instead, they have emphasized the social and environmental sources of patterns of development. Moreover, they call attention to social dynamics Freud de-emphasized or ignored, such as class relations. This branch of Freudian critique owes a great deal to the work of Herbert Marcuse.
> Freud has also come under fire from many feminist critics.[citation needed] Although Freud was an early champion of both sexual freedom and education for women (Freud, "Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern Nervousness"), some feminists have argued that at worst his views of women's sexual development set the progress of women in Western culture back decades, and that at best they lent themselves to the ideology of female inferiority[citation needed]. Believing as he did that women are a kind of mutilated male, who must learn to accept their "deformity" (the "lack" of a penis) and submit to some imagined biological imperative, he contributed to the vocabulary of misogyny[citation needed]. Terms such as "penis envy" and "castration anxiety" contributed to discouraging women from entering any field dominated by men, until the 1970s[citation needed]. Some of Freud's most criticized[citation needed] statements appear in his 'Fragment of Analysis' on Ida Bauer such as "This was surely just the situation to call up distinct feelings of sexual excitement in a girl of fourteen" in reference to Dora being kissed by a 'young man of prepossessing appearance'[27] implying the passivity of female sexuality and his statement "I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable"[28].
> On the other hand, feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin, Jane Gallop, and Jane Flax have argued that psychoanalytic theory is essentially related to the feminist project and must, like other theoretical traditions, be adapted by women to free it from vestiges of sexism[citation needed]. Major French feminists psychoanalysts like Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Bracha L. Ettinger elaborate Freudian theory and insights in order both to develop them and to criticize them, arriving, in the case of Irigaray and Ettinger into new propositions regarding the feminine. Freud's views are still being questioned by people concerned about women's equality[citation needed]. Another feminist who finds potential use of Freud's theories in the feminist movement is Shulamith Firestone. In "Freudianism: The Misguided Feminism", she discusses how Freudianism is essentially completely accurate, with the exception of one crucial detail: everywhere that Freud wrote "penis", the word should be replaced with "power".
> Dr. Jurgen von Scheidt speculated that most of Freud's psychoanalytical theory was a byproduct of his cocaine use.[29] Chronic cocaine use can produce unusual thinking patterns due to the depletion of dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex.
> Additionally, Freud has been widely criticized for his impact on survivors of sexual violence. Throughout his work, he came to the realization that many psychological disorders were caused by sexual trauma. After publishing these findings, he was ridiculed by the mental health community so, to protect his reputation, he declared that his findings were incorrect and these women were all lying about being abused. This has, in the opinions of many specialists in the area, led to decades of disbelieving sexual abuse survivors.[citation needed]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

Theres a lot there, but let me highlight two facts. First is the many incidences that Freud manipulated/lied about his data to show proofs for his theories. I dont know how many books have come out claiming Freuds falsifying of data. Frederick Crews, Richard Webster, Frank Cioffi have written books and you can look them up in Amazon and Google them to get the general gist. Crews has several pieces you might find on the internet. Heres from one:



> Then, too, there was my report of what a number of scholars have independently discovered about the birth of psychoanalysis--namely, that Freud, amid the ruins of his untenable 'seduction theory', peremptorily and gratuitously saddled his patients with a repressed desire for the incestuous acts that he had until then been unsuccessfully goading them to remember. (His later contention that they had told him about having been molested in early childhood was a characteristic reshaping of facts to comply with theory.) My readers were thus being invited to confront the unsettling fact that psychoanalysis arose from nothing more substantial than a confused effort on Freud's part to foist his explanatorily worthless hobbyhorse onto the fantasy life of his patients -- patients who, moreover, far from being cured by his revised ministrations as he would eventually claim, had for the most part already lost faith in him and abandoned his practice. My essay left a plain impression that such opportunistic improvising, which was to become Freud's chronic way of handling theoretical crises, could not have been the work of a genuine scientific pioneer.


http://www.human-nature.com/freud/crews.html

Scientists who manipulate data to to neatly support their theories are generally regarded as charlatans. Second, there is the Karl Popper criticism that Freuds theories lack falsifiabilty, which is a theory that lacks verification, but he goes beyond that to say that Freud method is dubious. You can read an excerpt from his paper here: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/...ification.html. 

The problem with Freuds method is that he bases grand theories on a handful of case studies. Where is the data? Where is the statistical analysis to show correlation? A hand full of case studies can lead you to anything. One can interpret a person who has a cup of coffee in the morning and dies from a heart attack in the afternoon that coffee leads to heart attacks. But that would be ridiculous because one has to have a sufficient statistical satisfactory number of data points to show that. For instance how many people drank coffee that morning and didnt have heart attacks, and, of course, how many people didnt drink coffee and had heart attacks. The trap that Freud puts himself into is that he claims cause and effect. Sexual trauma in childhood supposedly causes mental illness, if I may simplify it. Well, how many people have experience sexual trauma and dont have mental illness? And more importantly, how many people have mental illness but did not experience sexual trauma? Mental illness may or may not be coincident (meaning they could have both occurred but no causal link was present) to sexual trauma. To build a scientific case of such cause and effect claims, one needs a statistically satisfactory set of data. In my job as an engineer, a number of years ago we had a failure rate in a design of something like (I dont remember the exact numbers) of 2 out of a 200 or so. It was a complicated set of conditions so it was not completely evident what the fix needed to be. We believed we found the root cause. The next step was a verification test and the statisticians told us that in order verify to a 95% confidence we needed to run something like 277 experiments. That was costly. These are the statistical studies that Pharmaceuticals and research doctors have to perform regularly. Back to Freud: Wheres the verification test? Wheres the data? A few dozen case studies? For all I know the mental illness Freud sees in his patients is linked to the patients drinking coffee that morning. 

Now I dont mean to disparage psychology and therapy. Somewhere along the line, the 50s and 60s I think, psychologists began to realize what a bunch of bunk Freud is and transformed psychology into an understanding of human behavior rather than a hard medical claims made by Freud and his generation of whatever you want to call them. Recent psychology as I understand it doesnt put forth claims of cause and effect. It seems to me they try to understand behavior and try to adjust the patient to society and to the outside world around him. This is fundamentally different than Freud. I see this as a socializing process that all people need. It is limited. It will not cure schizophrenia or severe mental illness. It is no different than a person discussing things with a pastor or parents or siblings or friends. Lord knows that elderly seem to get so much from a simple bingo game, and perhaps we here on lit net get a socializing benefit from our discussions. I see this as a normalizing affect of human interaction, and given that a psychologist is trained and sees many cases has some better insight than a untrained person. I dont know what the statistics are, but Im sure for some cases psychologists are helpful.

To return to Freud, he gave us interpretation of dreams, hypnosis, and word association as windows into repressed trauma. These are methods not much removed from a séance or a palm reader. Given this and the falsifying of data, I conclude Freud was a charlatan. 

Let me end this with a personal story. About twenty-ish years ago my mother started to have some problems. She got really depressed, somewhat paranoiac, especially about the neighbors, and she started hear things about people. She thought people were conspiring against her and the family. She started to not eat. We had no experience with mental illness, so we let this go on for way too long. My brother, Mr. liberal arts Phd in anthropology and philosophy (he was not a PhD at the time though, but was steeped in liberal arts classes) said she had to work out her subconscious problems. She was practically bone thin when we went to our family doctor, who immediately referred us to a psychiatrist. Mind you a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. He put her on a couple of drugs. I would tell you their names, but I dont remember what they were. In a few weeks to a couple of months, she was normal. At some point she tried to stop taking them, thinking she didnt need them any more. She completely reverted back. It took another recovery and probably a couple of cycles to realize that she needed the drugs. But now shes as normal as anyone. It's been over twenty years. Mental illness is a disease that needs treatment. The drugs evolved over the years and as she became older they put her on something more for elderly, Celexa. She takes 40 mg every morning.

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## TheFifthElement

> Sweets, if you haven't already, you might find it helpful to look at some of the philosophers I've mentioned, especially Kant. Not that it's easy (I'm still at an absolutely rudimentary stage with it), but the questions you're discussing, about how we know and whether there can be a thought beyond science (meta-physics, literally, after physics) have been gone into exhaustively by him. 
> 
> To be necessarily simplistic, however, if something is 'provable', it's science. This is not just some construct. You seem to resent that idea, as if it's somehow oppressive. I think it's quite the opposite. The history of science is a large large part of the history of radical thought. Its greatest practitioners, including Freud, are profoundly unconventional thinkers whose work undermines conventional constructs (e.g. the world as centre of the universe). Science for them was not the great METHOD, it was a journey _without_ the certainties of method, sometimes built on strange, visionary, counter-intuitive leaps and sometimes undertaken at great personal risk, from ridicule to death by execution.



Brilliant post blp.

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## yassir elamrani

I am venturing to say that Mr.Freud was ,in fact, not sure about what he discover.That means, he himself did not undesrtand very well what he wrote.On the other words, I think that we ought to study a lot in order to know the truth

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## Virgil

> To be necessarily simplistic, however, if something is 'provable', it's science. This is not just some construct. You seem to resent that idea, as if it's somehow oppressive. I think it's quite the opposite. The history of science is a large large part of the history of radical thought. Its greatest practitioners, including Freud, are profoundly unconventional thinkers whose work undermines conventional constructs (e.g. the world as centre of the universe). Science for them was not the great METHOD, it was a journey _without_ the certainties of method, sometimes built on strange, visionary, counter-intuitive leaps and sometimes undertaken at great personal risk, from ridicule to death by execution.


I'm not arguing with you blp for the sake of arguing. I don't wish to argue. But I'm afraid that this ("Science for them was not the great METHOD") is wrong. If you look at Copernicus, Galleleo, Newton, Darwin you will see very disciplined approaches validated by testing or mathematical support or large amounts of data. Even Freud approached his process in what he believed was a scientific way. As to the last sentence of your post, that may have applied in the transition from a medevil world view to enlightment, but I don't think it applied much (Darwin being the exception perhaps) post enlightment. No one was more counter intuitive than Einstein. He was hardly ridiculed. Actually he was glorified. And look up all the great electronic physicists (Faraway, Lorentz, etc), not to mention the great thermodynamicists of the 19th century and all the medical scientists of the 20th. Many of these were highly revered in their day. As a liberal arts major, you're probably only exposed to the social implications rather than the science. 

And unfortuantely there are charlatans and bad scientists, and how do you separate them out? You can't possibly revere all counter intuitive thinkers. An astrologer is a counter intuitive thinker.

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## blp

Virgil, I didn't say _every_ scientist was ridiculed. Or rediculed either for that matter, whatever that might mean. To employ a little ridicule myself.  :Wink:  

I don't mind you arguing. I don't mind arguing myself, but in this instance, perhaps because I've expressed myself badly (though 5th disagrees - thanks 5th) I feel it's more a matter of clarifying. I wasn't trying to tell Sweets that there was no such thing as scientific methodology. What I was trying to make clear was that it's not some rigid set of formalised rules, but, precisely the opposite, a process that necessitates frequent refusal of received wisdom - usually because actual observation of the real world, or, more recently, the mathematical models - doesn't bear it out.

Still, I may have overstated the case to make it sound groovier than it really was. Not for the first time in this thread then, a _mea culpa_. 

Thanks for the detailed info on Freud's alleged charlatanism. It plays right into the hands one of my embedded prejudices - never trust a cokehead. The megalomania this drug almost invariably induces is convincing circumstantial evidence that he could have falsified his theories for the sake of fame. It's also ironic that Freud should have had such an attachment to this drug, when I and the Freudian analysts I've encountered, have a general antipathy to drug treatments for (relatively) minor mental health issues such as depression. 

Still, a few points... Freud's critics seem to be divided on the science question. Popper doesn't think Freudian theory is science. Others, notably someone called Grunberg, believes it is science, but just very _bad_ science. I'm not sure, from what you've posted, that you've quite made up your mind. Specifically, if you want to adopt Popper's claim that Freud isn't falsifiable, it doesn't make sense to say that he should have been using control groups and other methods of scientific testing that are use, precisely, to falsify. 

One of the critics you site says, in a pithy aphoristic way, that what is new in Freud is not true and what is true in Freud is not new. What about the talking cure itself? Freud himself attributes its discovery to Breuer, but Breuer, having stumbled upon it by accident, did not develop it. It was Freud who increasingly saw it as the central plank of treatment - and it remains the central plank of the modern psychological treatments you deem acceptable and even necessary for _everyone_ as a method of 'normalising' and 'socialising'. You don't provide any scientific grounds for believing in the efficacy of this process, which suggests you're at least a little open to the suggestion I make and Dapper Drake makes more succinctly that psychological treatment can't, by its nature, be held to the same scientific standard as, say, pasteurisation, the use of penicillin or your own engineering work. 

Assuming talking can have a beneficial effect (I'll grant even that is a big assumption), how is it to be conducted? If the patient says, 'I'm afraid of the dark' should the therapist, seeking to 'normalise' and 'socialise' the patient, simply reply, 'That's silly. The dark can't hurt you. Stop being afraid of the dark. Better now? Great, I'll send you my bill'? You don't have to be a practicing analyst to know that just pointing out a person's irrationality is rarely enough to instill rationality. 

So what kind of talk can help? I would say, to go back to Zizek's jokey reference to Rumsfeld, the kind of talk that provides access to the patient's 'unknown knowns', the things they know, but don't know they know; their unconscious. Within the framework of talk, what other source of knowledge could there be? If knowledge cannot come as common sense advice from the therapist, where else can it come but from the patient? Yet it can't be something the patient already knows they know because if they did, they'd already be relieved.

I would say, based on my own experience, that free association can be an effective way of accessing the unconscious. For instance, recently, while writing random words in a notebook, I found myself repeatedly coming back to words constructed around 'ov' and 'of' - over, lover, love, ovary, loaf, oven - eventually arriving at the pun (on the common slang for pregnancy, 'a bun in the oven') 'a bun in the ovum'. To use a rather Freudian construction, _this brought up intense feelings_ and I realised I was still chewing over the relationship, now several years behind me, in which my partner had an abortion and then left me shortly afterwards. Writing about this _still_ brings up intense feelings, leading to a relief of feelings of general tension. I would say that, unconsciously, I still know I have painful feelings concerning this subject, but until I access them via free association, I don't know it and take the rational, conventional, common-sense view that all this is now sufficiently in the past that I _should_ be over it. As an aside, it is precisely this overturning of the conventionalist _should_ that I prefer, utterly, in Freud to your strange, somewhat sinister notion of 'normalising'. Conversely, the left wing theorist Marcuse, to whom your long wikipedia quote refers, objected to Freudian analysis precisely to the extent that it concerned itself, or had begun to concern itself, with normalisation and socialisation, objecting, quite rightly I think, that it would be _unhealthy_ to adapt oneself to certain aspects of society.

In both the matter of dream analysis and free association, Freudian theory is involved with condensation and metaphor. Another aside: it somewhat surprises me, Virgil, that someone with a serious interest in poetry such as yours, wouldn't be more receptive to the idea that language, by employing these kinds of devices, can act on us with greater power, on the parts of ourselves we do not understand. 

Your distressing experience with your mother certainly demonstrates the danger of applying Freud DIY to serious mental illness, but I don't think any professional analyst today would expect to be able to treat a schizophrenic using nothing but a talking cure - let alone leaving the matter up to the sufferer's family. 

Your long list of Freud objectors is hardly surprising, given his fame. Would it be too banal to point out that you could have put together an equally long list of intellectually credible admirers? I'll risk it: some of them, such as Julia Kristeva, even sneak into your list. White Camellia's post in this thread suggests the pro camp would also include Thomas Mann and Einstein. But to further clarify what should, perhaps, be an obvious point: neither I, nor, I think, anyone else who has defended Freud here has suggested he was right about everything. Nor do any analysts currently practicing. But you seem to want to imply that he was _wrong_ about everything - even as, perhaps inadvertently, you do seem to accept his key innovation, the talking cure.

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## Il Penseroso

Yet another brilliant post blp.

I'm just going to chime in here briefly to say thanks to both blp and Virgil for their efforts to clarify positions taken on this subject. This is a subject I've recently wanted to learn more about (pondered starting a thread about it awhile back), so I do very much appreciate all of the above contributions.


One thing I would like to mention, however, is in response to Virgil's statements concerning the debunking of Freud through the behavioral program in the '50s and '60s. As you may already know, this program was started as part of the idea that one's environment can be manipulated, according to Watson, to create any sort of individual one might wish, for example, "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select" his famous quote goes. Now surely neither you nor any credible scientist today believes this to still be true (I believe even Watson himself recanted later), but the importance of the psychological perspective that developed from this has had far reaching significance as modified by individuals who are more thoroughly _scientific_.

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## blp

Thanks, Il Pensoroso. 

Interestingly, Adam Curtis' four-part documentary The Century of the Self refers, I think, to the kind of behavioural programme you describe, but lays the blame for it on Freud _too_. But then, it is a very confused piece of work.

The whole thing's worth checking out and worth referring to here because it's all, supposedly, about Freud. It also stirs things up nicely in that it's an attack on Freud, but with a completely different slant from Virgil's. Curtis' beef is that he believes Freud's theories have been used as the basis for a methodology of mass manipulation, profoundly inimical to democratic freedom. It's not all bull - Freud's nephew Eddie Bernays was the inventor of PR and does seem to have been inspired by Freud's understanding of the psyche in his own, more manifestly nefarious activities. All of which suggests, at least, that Freud really had discovered something that worked!

Here's part 1. The other parts will be made available to you as you go.

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## Virgil

> I don't mind you arguing. I don't mind arguing myself, but in this instance, perhaps because I've expressed myself badly (though 5th disagrees - thanks 5th) I feel it's more a matter of clarifying. I wasn't trying to tell Sweets that there was no such thing as scientific methodology. What I was trying to make clear was that it's not some rigid set of formalised rules, but, precisely the opposite, a process that necessitates frequent refusal of received wisdom - usually because actual observation of the real world, or, more recently, the mathematical models - doesn't bear it out.


I agree in the sense that the burst of inspiration may not be derived by some disciplined method, but one ultimately has to go back to prove the theory. There are what's called exploratory experiments that may assess a hypothesis, and if it flunks that then you need not go any further. Subsequently one has to go through a more rigorous set of experiments (currently they are referred to as "Desgn of Experiments" or DOEs - these terms seem to change every few years), and then following that a verification set of experiments. Perhaps, and I'm not sure I've given this enough thought, and I probably don't know all the details, Freud's case studies might constitute exploratory experiments.




> Thanks for the detailed info on Freud's alleged charlatanism. It plays right into the hands one of my embedded prejudices - never trust a cokehead.


 :FRlol:  He was addicted, wasn't he. 




> Still, a few points... Freud's critics seem to be divided on the science question. Popper doesn't think Freudian theory is science. Others, notably someone called Grunberg, believes it is science, but just very _bad_ science. I'm not sure, from what you've posted, that you've quite made up your mind. Specifically, if you want to adopt Popper's claim that Freud isn't falsifiable, it doesn't make sense to say that he should have been using control groups and other methods of scientific testing that are use, precisely, to falsify.


I saw Grunberg's name come up and I didn't find anything to read on the internet. Without knowing specifically Grunberg's point I can't really comment. It might just be a question of semantics and if the two got together they may actually agree. I think Freud started with the best of intentions, but I got to think that somewhere along the line he had to realize what he was doing wasn't science. 




> One of the critics you site says, in a pithy aphoristic way, that what is new in Freud is not true and what is true in Freud is not new. What about the talking cure itself? Freud himself attributes its discovery to Breuer, but Breuer, having stumbled upon it by accident, did not develop it. It was Freud who increasingly saw it as the central plank of treatment - and it remains the central plank of the modern psychological treatments you deem acceptable and even necessary for _everyone_ as a method of 'normalising' and 'socialising'.


Well, if the contemporary psychologists find that their methods actually derived from Freud then who am I to say that he didn't contribute. My objections with Freud is this notion that (a) there is a root cause to mental illness of something being repressed and (b) that it can be cured by identifying it and bringing it to consciousness. That seems to me to be the heart of Freudian hard science, so to speak.




> You don't provide any scientific grounds for believing in the efficacy of this process, which suggests you're at least a little open to the suggestion I make and Dapper Drake makes more succinctly that psychological treatment can't, by its nature, be held to the same scientific standard as, say, pasteurisation, the use of penicillin or your own engineering work.


Yes, this is true. If Freud's hard science were true, you would need a large amount of data, because there are so many variables that one can't control. I think that data may exist for psychological therapy. I don't know it. If a number of people with certain illnesses pass through a process, we should be able to get some sort of statistics on whether they improved or not. There may be some subjectivity there, but I think it can be demonstrated. There are statistics on drug programs. If Freud's technique was valid, the statistics would have been built up by now and I'm sure many would be bragging about their success rate.




> Assuming talking can have a beneficial effect (I'll grant even that is a big assumption), how is it to be conducted? If the patient says, 'I'm afraid of the dark' should the therapist, seeking to 'normalise' and 'socialise' the patient, simply reply, 'That's silly. The dark can't hurt you. Stop being afraid of the dark. Better now? Great, I'll send you my bill'? You don't have to be a practicing analyst to know that just pointing out a person's irrationality is rarely enough to instill rationality.


I don't know. That's why I'm skeptical on it. But at the clinic where my mother goes to the psychiatrist, there are people who see psychologists and these people (I bet many are drug users, but not all) seem to have all sorts of coping problems. I assume they live outside of an institution and so must cope somehow. I hope the therapy helps. 




> So what kind of talk can help? I would say, to go back to Zizek's jokey reference to Rumsfeld, the kind of talk that provides access to the patient's 'unknown knowns', the things they know, but don't know they know; their unconscious. Within the framework of talk, what other source of knowledge could there be? If knowledge cannot come as common sense advice from the therapist, where else can it come but from the patient? Yet it can't be something the patient already knows they know because if they did, they'd already be relieved.


Actually Rumsfeld didn't invent that phrase. That comes out of risk analysis, and assessing different types of risks. Those are real terms. (What you know you know, what you know you don't know, what you don't know you know, and what you don't know you don't know.  :FRlol:  I can see how that can lead to a funny skit.) I don't know what type of talk helps. Perhaps it's just human interation and minds coming together to agree on a mutual perception of the world. Isolated people can lead themselves into a world view that's different. That can be good and bad. But when it affects social interactions, that's almost always bad. I do love trying to understand the human brain, but it is a mysterious organ. I don't claim to understand it.




> I would say, based on my own experience, that free association can be an effective way of accessing the unconscious. For instance, recently, while writing random words in a notebook, I found myself repeatedly coming back to words constructed around 'ov' and 'of' - over, lover, love, ovary, loaf, oven - eventually arriving at the pun (on the common slang for pregnancy, 'a bun in the oven') 'a bun in the ovum'. To use a rather Freudian construction, _this brought up intense feelings_ and I realised I was still chewing over the relationship, now several years behind me, in which my partner had an abortion and then left me shortly afterwards. Writing about this _still_ brings up intense feelings, leading to a relief of feelings of general tension. I would say that, unconsciously, I still know I have painful feelings concerning this subject, but until I access them via free association, I don't know it and take the rational, conventional, common-sense view that all this is now sufficiently in the past that I _should_ be over it. As an aside, it is precisely this overturning of the conventionalist _should_ that I prefer, utterly, in Freud to your strange, somewhat sinister notion of 'normalising'. Conversely, the left wing theorist Marcuse, to whom your long wikipedia quote refers, objected to Freudian analysis precisely to the extent that it concerned itself, or had begun to concern itself, with normalisation and socialisation, objecting, quite rightly I think, that it would be _unhealthy_ to adapt oneself to certain aspects of society.


I don't know what to say. If it helps you. I just really have hard time believing that word association leads to anything. Can there be a certain bias as to the types of words a person brings up? It's possible but how variables involved must be humugous. If a person brings up a word an association, how do you know he's not associating it with event A or with event B or with both? I can't fathom what to make of it. Perhaps we hould look over the word association game here on lit net and look for a pattern.  :Wink:  




> In both the matter of dream analysis and free association, Freudian theory is involved with condensation and metaphor. Another aside: it somewhat surprises me, Virgil, that someone with a serious interest in poetry such as yours, wouldn't be more receptive to the idea that language, by employing these kinds of devices, can act on us with greater power, on the parts of ourselves we do not understand.


As to art it is a wonderful concept. Perhaps that's why it has ingrained itself into our culture. That's why so many writers use it. I don't criticize writers who use it (except perhaps by now it's become overdone). Two of my favorite writers, while not necessary strict Freudians, used psychology extensively with great effect: D.H. Lawrence and William Faulkner. And of course Joyce too. Actually Lawrence wrote his own non-fiction treatise on psychology, _Fantasia of the Unconscious_. It's right here on lit net: http://www.online-literature.com/dh_...f-unconscious/. I'm sure as psychology it's crap, but it shows you almost anyone can create their own theories of the mind. 




> Your distressing experience with your mother certainly demonstrates the danger of applying Freud DIY to serious mental illness, but I don't think any professional analyst today would expect to be able to treat a schizophrenic using nothing but a talking cure - let alone leaving the matter up to the sufferer's family.


Yeah I know, but my mother's problem isn't all that uncommon or serious mental illness. There are probaly lots of people with depression. The paranoia and voices she heard was scary and probably more serious. But it all went away after a few weeks. I was amazed. 




> Your long list of Freud objectors is hardly surprising, given his fame. Would it be too banal to point out that you could have put together an equally long list of intellectually credible admirers? I'll risk it: some of them, such as Julia Kristeva, even sneak into your list. White Camellia's post in this thread suggests the pro camp would also include Thomas Mann and Einstein. But to further clarify what should, perhaps, be an obvious point: neither I, nor, I think, anyone else who has defended Freud here has suggested he was right about everything. Nor do any analysts currently practicing. But you seem to want to imply that he was _wrong_ about everything - even as, perhaps inadvertently, you do seem to accept his key innovation, the talking cure.


If the talking cure is what contemporary psychologists do, and he was the first which I'm not all that sure either, then let's give him credit. I'm not knowledgable enough on the subject. I think I've also said that his formulation of id/ego/superego was creative and enlightening, even if it's not biologiaclly based. It's a model of understanding human nature.

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## blazeofglory

Freud does not appeal to me. His idea that sex is the determinant or that it shapes the course of action of man is a flawed opinion and there is no strand of truth in his statement at all.

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## Quark

> If Freud had limited himself to social science, and his theories were strictly a vision of human insight, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. I might even say it's creative and interesting. But the fact that he claims to put himself into a scientific/biological framework then we can only conclude it's a complete failure and frankly he, as a doctor and scientist, must have known that his theories were built on anectdote. Anyone in the scientific community can see that Freud is either a fraud (how ironic that Freud and fraud are almost homophones) because he knew that his theories did not meet scientific scrutiny or he was one of the poorest scientists to ever claim a scientific mantle.


This would be true if Freud were publishing his works today, but he was writing at a time before the kind of scientific rigor you want was possible. At the turn of the century, psychology was still a very speculative field, and there were few practitioners to discuss with. Yet, even to talk about Freud as a scientist, is to miss the point somewhat. Freud's ideas didn't grow out of his contact with psychology. They came from the skeptical philosophy common in Germany at the time that wanted to find a new basis for action that wasn't reason. Nietzsche was perhaps the most articulate speaker for the new ideas. He proposed that desire provides the impetus of action and not reason: "most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts." Freud merely borrowed this line of thought when he conceived of a consciousness driven by hidden desires. Unlike his predecessors who wrote philosophical tracts and social critiques, Freud turned this model of consciousness toward science. He writes in _The Interpretation of Dreams_ "We may now perhaps begin to suspect that dream-analysis is capable of yielding information concerning the structure of our psychic apparatus which we have hitherto vain expected from philosophy"(39). 

Freud then applies to this idea the scientific evidence available to him, in order test the theory and expose it to scientific analysis. If he fails at doing this, it's because of the dearth of information available to him--not because of his sloppy work. He does quote the French medical journals, local academics, and the studies within his reach. Today, of course, this method wouldn't convince anyone, but that's only because our data is much greater.

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## white camellia

> This would be true if Freud were publishing his works today, but he was writing at a time before the kind of scientific rigor you want was possible. At the turn of the century, psychology was still a very speculative field, and there were few practitioners to discuss with. Yet, even to talk about Freud as a scientist, is to miss the point somewhat. Freud's ideas didn't grow out of his contact with psychology. They came from the skeptical philosophy common in Germany at the time that wanted to find a new basis for action that wasn't reason. Nietzsche was perhaps the most articulate speaker for the new ideas. He proposed that desire provides the impetus of action and not reason: "most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts." Freud merely borrowed this line of thought when he conceived of a consciousness driven by hidden desires. Unlike his predecessors who wrote philosophical tracts and social critiques, Freud turned this model of consciousness toward science. He writes in _The Interpretation of Dreams_ "We may now perhaps begin to suspect that dream-analysis is capable of yielding information concerning the structure of our psychic apparatus which we have hitherto vain expected from philosophy"(39). 
> 
> Freud then applies to this idea the scientific evidence available to him, in order test the theory and expose it to scientific analysis. If he fails at doing this, it's because of the dearth of information available to him--not because of his sloppy work. He does quote the French medical journals, local academics, and the studies within his reach. Today, of course, this method wouldn't convince anyone, but that's only because our data is much greater.


Very good! Shouldn't our judgment be based on the facts from the darkest to the brightest instead of any bias from partial observations and the standards of today?

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## Orionsbelt

When you are looking at something that is a complete mystery a completely new thing, what is an impartial observation? by any standard....

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## white camellia

> When you are looking at something that is a complete mystery a completely new thing, what is an impartial observation? by any standard....


We are not encouraged to "judge" mystery, are we?

Of course, 'partial observations' are not 'imperfect induction' or 'hypothesis'.




> And unfortuantely there are charlatans and bad scientists, and how do you separate them out? You can't possibly revere all counter intuitive thinkers. An astrologer is a counter intuitive thinker.


Is this true that 'intuition' or 'intuitive thinking' is compatible with science at some point?

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## Orionsbelt

You have to hear the music first.... then create the dance.

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## Virgil

> Is this true that 'intuition' or 'intuitive thinking' is compatible with science at some point?


I think in science one can use intuitive thinking to envision a solution. But that's not proof. A solution can come to you but then you have to do the hard work to proove it. In engineering, which is my profession, it becomes really dicey. The best engineering college professor I had ingrained in us to never trust one's intuition. When you're applying science, the test of ideas is evident in the product. It's not just an idea in a book. Bridges and building can and do fall down. What intuitively looks strong enough turns out not to be. Analysis and tests are critical. I have come across this many times. There have been quite a few times when we make a decision where the situation is ambiguous but we go make a decision to try something (only a test not a final product) and we get shocked at the results that show our intuitive choice was wrong. That college professor was so right. The human mind cannot conceptualize the results of multi variables all working simultaneously.




> This would be true if Freud were publishing his works today, but he was writing at a time before the kind of scientific rigor you want was possible. At the turn of the century, psychology was still a very speculative field,


That's rediculous. Darwin spent decades collecting data. There are a whole host of great scientist well before Freud. Here:




> The 19th century saw the birth of science as a profession; the term scientist was coined in 1833 by William Whewell[1]. Among the most influential ideas of the 19th century were those of Charles Darwin, who in 1859 published the book The Origin of Species, which introduced the idea of evolution by natural selection. Louis Pasteur made the first vaccine against rabies, and also made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, including the asymmetry of crystals. Thomas Alva Edison gave the world light with his invention of the lightbulb. Karl Weierstrass and other mathematicians also carried out the arithmetization of analysis. But the most important step in science at this time was the ideas formulated by Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. Their work changed the face of physics and made possible for new technology to come about. Other important 19th century scientists included:
> 
> Amedeo Avogadro, physicist 
> Johann Jakob Balmer, mathematician, physicist 
> Henri Becquerel, physicist 
> Alexander Graham Bell, inventor 
> Ludwig Boltzmann, physicist 
> János Bolyai, mathematician 
> Louis Braille, inventor of braille 
> ...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_century#Science

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## Quark

> That's rediculous. Darwin spent decades collecting data. There are a whole host of great scientist well before Freud. Here:


I'm not saying there wasn't excellent evidence being collected and analysis being done at all. Of course there were many great scientist before Freud. Few, however, were involved with pschology. None of the people you listed were pschologists. The comparison between Darwin and Freud doesn't hold up. A much better comparison might be between Freud and someone like Copernicus since both were trying answer questions before a successful science existed to explain them. Each of them also made many false claims, and were, under any objective standard, poor scientists. Copernicus believed that the planets orbited the sun in perfect circles which we now think is completely ridiculous. There's also evidence to suggest that his heliocentric model of the solar system was due to the philosophy of sun-worship. To be fair to Copernicus, though, we have to admit that he didn't have the Galileo's telescope or the set of data that Kepler had. We also understand that he lived in a different society than we live in. Even though we might acknowledge that his ideas had a fictitious basis, we credit him with the development of a field. In a similar way, Freud's ideas--while being ridiculous in their own right--can be seen as part of the devolpment of a science. 

I suspect this is all besides the point, though. The ad hominem against Freud is probably meant to obscure more than help. If you can devalue the topic of conversation enough, then agreement or disagreement become almost irrelevent. In this case, if everyone agrees that Freud's model of the psyche is just a vague notion, then whenever someone claims to be a Freudian it doens't mean much of anything. I think this moves the conversation backwards. Part of what I mentioned about Freud in my last post is that he took a vague world-view from philosophy and exposed it to scientific examination and discussion. Even if the way he exposed it was incredibly unprofesional, he was the first to do it, and that's what makes him relevant. This advanced the discussion. To claim that all Freud ideas were is a vague world-view, is to miss the point and move the conversation backwards.

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## Nightshade

What it boils down to is how real a science is psychology and can we seriously quantify an gereralise people?

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## Virgil

> I'm not saying there wasn't excellent evidence being collected and analysis being done at all. Of course there were many great scientist before Freud. Few, however, were involved with pschology. None of the people you listed were pschologists. The comparison between Darwin and Freud doesn't hold up. A much better comparison might be between Freud and someone like Copernicus since both were trying answer questions before a successful science existed to explain them. Each of them also made many false claims, and were, under any objective standard, poor scientists. Copernicus believed that the planets orbited the sun in perfect circles which we now think is completely ridiculous. There's also evidence to suggest that his heliocentric model of the solar system was due to the philosophy of sun-worship. To be fair to Copernicus, though, we have to admit that he didn't have the Galileo's telescope or the set of data that Kepler had. We also understand that he lived in a different society than we live in. Even though we might acknowledge that his ideas had a fictitious basis, we credit him with the development of a field. In a similar way, Freud's ideas--while being ridiculous in their own right--can be seen as part of the devolpment of a science. 
> 
> I suspect this is all besides the point, though. The ad hominem against Freud is probably meant to obscure more than help. If you can devalue the topic of conversation enough, then agreement or disagreement become almost irrelevent. In this case, if everyone agrees that Freud's model of the psyche is just a vague notion, then whenever someone claims to be a Freudian it doens't mean much of anything. I think this moves the conversation backwards. Part of what I mentioned about Freud in my last post is that he took a vague world-view from philosophy and exposed it to scientific examination and discussion. Even if the way he exposed it was incredibly unprofesional, he was the first to do it, and that's what makes him relevant. This advanced the discussion. To claim that all Freud ideas were is a vague world-view, is to miss the point and move the conversation backwards.


What can I tell you Quark. If you find value in Freud so be it. There are more harmful myths to believe in. However do society a favor. If you suspect someone is mentally ill, send them to a doctor. Don't try to psychoanalyze.

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## Janine

Oh no, not another 'warm' debate!  :FRlol:  It even beat out the 'Incest' thread today. Now be nice guys...*smile*grin*

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## frida_kahlo

one of his methods, free association, is frequently used today

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## Quark

> Oh no, not another 'warm' debate!  It even beat out the 'Incest' thread today. Now be nice guys...*smile*grin*


I think Virgil and I are too busy to get "warm" over this argument. I only posted because I was a little miffed at the way things were going. It seemed like an important discussion was getting sidetracked by the question, "Was Freud a coke-head?"

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## blazeofglory

Freud is a great influence on the history of thought and a great many books are written shadowed by his thoughts.

But he is outdated the way Marx is. Every idea has a phase of it liked every fruit has a season.

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