Schinckel.net

I can’t remember when I first heard of Freud. I think I didn’t really know enough about him while at school to make any decisions, other than the term Freudian Slip. It wasn’t until I was at Uni, and studying some Psychology that I came across him in any context. I read a couple of fairly biting criticisms of his work by people like Stephen Jay Gould, and haven’t really had any respect for him since then. There’s one quote I really enjoy, particularly since it nicely complements the Freud/Fraud similarity:

Everything Freud did that was new was not true, and everything Freud did that was true was not new.

I can’t remember exactly where I heard it, and my books are all in storage from when I moved house over 12 months ago, but I just love it. Google tells me Schamcher said it was “a Norwegian doctor,” but I’m unable to find anything concrete. So why the sudden resurgance in Freud? Apparently, there’s some 140 year anniversary - can’t remember if it’s birth, death or something else, but in the past week, there have been two programmes on Radio National that have mentioned him. I haven’t listened to the All in the Mind programme, but the Science Show mention was pretty scathing:

Freud decided that these accounts by Emma Eckstein, and other women like her, of having been seduced by a man in their childhood were simply fantasies, they were the product of hysterical, unconscious lying, self-deception.

What’s quite interesting is that this quote, and the whole interview in this episode is from twenty years ago. Freud has consistently been outed as a fraud, and has in many cases set back Psychology and Psychiatry back decades. Still we have not learned, and people continue to believe that because Freud said something, it must be so. Even a quick search for some articles criticising Freud on Google resulted in more that sounded like an attack on his critics, rather than actual well balanced criticism. Little mention is made of the extremely limited sample size of his studies. I recall some mention that his theories were based on evidence presented using four patients. Possibly, these could have been representative, but that is a fairly small sample by any account. Similarly, Freud pushed for his theories to be scientific, but they are anything but. They aim to explain everything, similar to creationism, and are not falsifiable. That is, like creationism, two opposing outcomes, which must be mutually exclusive, can both be explained by the one theory. It is not possible to make proper predictions using theories like this. And that’s using the vernacular theory, rather than the more scientific meaning of the term. Freud’s beliefs and teachings were misogynistic, and hark back to a darker time. They discount the evidence provided, and the article linked to above seems to indicate that Freud was aware his theories were based on flawed information. This is worse than a deluded creationist who truly believes that God created everything, as it shows a willingness to tell nasty little lies to further one’s own work, or protect one’s friends. This is deplorable, especially as it was at the expense of others. Similar in scope to Aristotle, Freud has caused severe problems to the rate of development of a branch of science. Perhaps we have caught on to the flaws and falsehoods in a shorter time frame, or Freud’s influence is less because of the already large body of knowledge in other fields, but Aristotle’s ideas led to the dark ages. I’m glad this was averted post-Freud. • I think I got a little carried away towards the end of this, but I enjoyed writing it, so I’m going to leave it all there.