What do you think of Freudian psychology?

To me Freud’s thinking loses a lot of credibility when he denied that it applied to himself.

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

@Grisson I agree completely (I haven’t studied Freud to a great extent though. . . ).
hehe penis envy

I never really spent a lot of time looking into Freud’s psychosexual theories.
They didn’t seem to have much relevancy.

But I do that that Freud made other contributions that were beneficial.

Apparently men want their moms and women have penis envy. What doesn’t sound perfectly reasonable about that? I think that Freud was a great therapist but he did not get a broad sample of the population. He spoke with wealthy unstable housewives, who aren’t exaclty the most representative group of people. I do like that he was pioneer though, and gave patients more power over what they felt but then again Freud also advocated cocaine early on in his career so…

@Grisson – exactly.

Flat out, I think for the most part that he was a moron.

I’ve read a lot about Freud, as well as Jung, and much of his theories apply to my own life and I can see how certain “complexes” have manifested themselves and have affected who I am.

While I think some of his theories may be a little far fetched (penis envy anyone?) I do believe in many of his major theories: complexes, super ego/ego, Id, the development of sexuality, and the various manifestations of traumatic childhood sexual experiences. (Although I don’t think I agree with him on homosexuals, since he believes people are made homosexuals through certain experiences in childhood).

All in all though, he was onto something.
hehe my father gave me a Freud action figure, it’s sitting on my desk now

@mrswho

as for the cocaine part, I wasn’t really surprised that he incorporated that into his practice. Cocaine, in small amounts, used to be used a lot by doctors in general back in the old days, especially in Germany and Austria.

heh heh, funny story, my grandfather was a very old German doctor. A couple years ago, when he died, my family and I had to clean out his ancient doctor’s bag and we found a little vial of cocaine…apparently he used it with patients back in the day to stop nosebleeds? I dunno, but we quickly got rid of it. (yuck)

When we say Freud is a moron because the field of psychology debunked his theories, it’s like saying Ben Franklin is a moron because he doesn’t know about computers. Freud is a star for the field of psychology because he laid down many of the original ideas. The fact that they were wrong is irrelevant. He was a theorist, not really a social scientist. He probably didn’t have the methodological training, nor the time to study the impact of his treatments in a scientific way.

I would not like to be psychoanalyzed in a Freudian way these days, but that’s because I wouldn’t want to be put under by ether for an operation, since we know so much more about anesthesia now. We owe a lot to Freud. However, any Freudians practicing now, who use his original methods—that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax!

I think that while he has a few valid points, a lot of his ideas were coke-induced bullshite.
I mean, when you’re all coked out, you’re bound to assume everything’s sexual.

I was shocked to discover that he dismissed the reports he got from his female patients of their sexual abuse as children, simply because it was too overwhelming for him to believe. That’s not good science. I don’t think everything he said was wrong, but I rank William James a bit higher than Freud on my Psychology Theorists’ scale. James was a more holistic thinker.

I think Freud was brilliant. Not right about everything, but he was on the mark about many things. It is far easier to dismiss what he said than try and figure out how what he said might apply to our own lives. Easier to take pills. He also pioneered the field of “talking cures” i.e. therapy, and I know of many people who have been helped enormously by the work they have done in therapy.

He was revolutionary for his time. But you must remember, his time was much different than the one we live in now. Some of his practices and theories has passed the litmus test and others have been disregarded. But there should be no question that he made multiple and viable contributions to his field and laid the foundation for continued research.

Too simplistic, sure maybe sometimes he does have a point, but psychologists use Freud’s books as a Bible. And end up with the same dogmatic mistakes that the Church makes when it insists that the Earth is flat or that Jesus’ mum was a virgin. Freud is important because he built the foundation of modern psychology, but we’ve come a long way since.

@Jack79 If you would read any of the psychiatry journals published in the last few decades, you would know the field has moved far beyond Freud, and few, if any, psychologists use him as the source of psychological knowledge.

@Jack79

I’ve met many psychologists and they all think Freud was full of it and discredit his theories.

I have hear that some Freudian mothers eat their Jung.

Schrinks in the 20TH Century loved it! It was all by the hour, and they could sleep while people talked. Psycho-pharmacist rule now. They’ll tell you to get over it and give you pills. They charge $75.00 for 15 minutes, and they don’t get as much sleep.

lol steelmarket, that was witty :)

When I was trying to make things work with my wife, we tried counselling. We used a woman who called herself a “child psychologist” for about 6 months. She was not a family therapist, but what’s worse, she was a very bad scientist overall. Her idea of solving the crisis was to figure out if either of us was still in love with our parents. She had a very superficial grasp of Freud (I did 2 semesters of psychology at university and knew a lot more than she did, and she had all those diplomas supposedly). She had never even heard of most of the other psychologists or their theories. Really bad.
We tried a couple of sessions with someone much better after that, but by then it was obvious that the marriage was down the drain. Not only did the so-called psychologist did not help, but she actually made things worse. When we missed some sessions due to practical reasons, our relationship actually got better. Ah well. Bad luck I guess.

let me ask my dad.