Vanishing American

I am getting annoyed at seeing Freud's ideas being used liberally by "conservatives", often in the most speculative ways. So I would like to bring up this question for those with a better knowledge of psychology than myself: Hasn't most of Freud's work been debunked? I know that Kevin MacDonald said so to some extent in Culture of Critique, but it was peripheral to his point. Most people, though, continue to argue as if Freud were still an unchallenged authority.

Also, I tended to think that Freud thought "repression" was still a necessary thing for civilization, even though he knew that repression sometimes led to certain kinds of "neurosis". I thought he was of the opinion that civilization, with all its strains on the psyche, was still preferable to the alternative -- and that it wasn't possible to have civilization without the constraints that civilization typically imposes on the "id". Is this correct? Even if this is not what Freud believed, isn't its opposite a non-testable, hence non-scientific, hypothesis?

Isn't it about time we called out Freudian language whenever we saw it, and made it clear that the speaker was using pseudoscience? We wouldn't take seriously anyone who tried to argue a point by appealing to the geocentric theory of the solar system, or the phlogiston theory, or the theory of the luminiferous ether. Why should we be giving Freud this undeserved respect either?

I agree about conservatives (especially Christians) citing Freud or treating him as though his ideas were beyond question.

It's my understanding that Freud has been pretty well discredited among those in the psychology field for some time, but strangely his ideas live on. A friend of mine who is a psychologist, and with whom I have friendly debates occasionally, says that nobody (in psychology circles) believes in Freud's ideas these days. Yet his ideas and his vocabulary ("id", "repression" 'Oedipus complex", "anal-retentive", etc.) have passed into popular culture and are now common wisdom for most people.

This review of a book called The Freud Encyclopedia
http://www.gale.cengage.com/reference/a ... freud.html
confirms the perceptions I have:

Long discredited by the very field he founded, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) remains a cultural icon of incredible influence. Freud's revolutionary thinking on the human mind, identity and dreams has excited passions and galvanized debates ever since their introduction in late 19th-century Vienna.

Beginning with detailed studies of hysteria and moving on to sexuality and dreams, Freud gradually formulated a theory of psychoanalysis, a "talking cure," that by the first decades of the 20th century was attracting fervent support and equally virulent criticism. As psychologists and others attacked and debunked specific ideas, Freud's work and methods found wider, longer lasting audiences in film, philosophy, anthropology and literature.

This discussion
http://socialscienceplusplus.blogspot.c ... anist.html
is about Freud's influence in the humanities.

This is an interesting subject; I think Freud was/is one of the most influential people for much of the 20th century and into this century. Why this is is debatable. I think for a post-Christian west, one which is infatuated with 'science', something is needed to take the place of Christianity, which is no longer taken seriously by many professing Christians.
The ideas of Freud and of psychology in general are a kind of competing belief system. They offer quasi-scientific answers to the big questions like 'what is the purpose of our existence? What is the nature of man? What is good? What is evil? Do good and evil even exist? How should we live?' I suppose for those who think the Biblical answers to those questions are too confining, psychology has a great appeal.
-VA

John and VA,

You might be interested in this link for another view. Freud himself is insignificant in the article, but later expanders on his ideas are not so insignificant to our societies.

http://www.unsaccodicanapa.com/htmlpage ... power.html

You might want to also look at one of the exercises based on Freud.

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:1g ... =clnk&cd=4

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Flanders, that's interesting if disturbing stuff.

I can see how Freud's ideas, and psychology in general, work hand-in-hand with political leftism/progressivism in this whole PC indoctrination and conditioning process. But if you express that opinion, people tend to react as if you were expressing disbelief in gravity or something equally self-evident. For most people, psychology and psychotherapy are 'science' and they are a blessing to us, and are not to be questioned. In a sense, they've come to occupy the place of reverence or at least faith which once belonged only to God or the Bible.

I blogged about this issue some months back and found nobody in agreement with me.

I realize John's post was specifically about Freud but I guess I'm not straying too far from topic, considering that it all started, pretty much, with Freud.

If Freud's theories had been treated as just theories, not as proven fact or 'science' maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but his ideas, though officially discredited by the psychology establishment, have taken hold and led to other questionable theories and practices which now have attained scientific legitimacy, yet they don't really meet the standard of scientific proof as is necessary in the hard sciences. I have a problem with the 'social sciences' in general because they are mostly touchy-feely, vague and ambiguous, and as I think Richard Feynman said, more like witch-doctoring or astrology than real science.
-VA

On the subject of pseudoscience, anytime you see someone talking about the stages of death (starting with denial, ending with acceptance) that's also debunked pseudoscience. The woman who did the study establishing that model basically falsified her entire set of results; there's no evidence for it at all. Nobody cares to dig into it though. I also think that since people expect to see those things they go out of their way to act the parts out as they think they should, when they might not if left to their own devices.

Rollory, I hadn't been aware of the debunking of that 'stages' idea. Was it Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who came up with that?

Even now, years after that book was publicized, I hear people referring to the 'stages' of dying. It's passed into 'common wisdom', just like a lot of the Freudian ideas. It becomes unchallenged dogma.
-VA