Did freud actually observe tribal societies, or just read about them? Given the substantive cricisim of Freud from all sorts of angles this is probably an important issue.
Even if he did observe them, which I don't believe he did, who is to say that he was 'objective' in doing so? Is such a thing even possible? (Michael W. Clark, Ph.D.)
Not much of a mention of the controversies around Freud's theories. Even someone who's a fan of Freud ought to know about a few of them. GregLindahl
This is better than it used to be, but: 'Freud dealt mankind the most severe narcissistic injury of all...' is still adulatory in tone rather than explanatory.
- Freud's psychological theories are hotly disputed today and many leading academic and research psychiatrists regard him as a charlatan. Although Freud was long regarded as a genius and the founder of psychology, today psychiatry has been recast as a scientific discipline and psychiatric disorders as diseases of the brain whose etiology is principally genetic. This is largely due to the repudiation of Freud's theories and the adoption of many of the basic scientific principles of Freud's principal opponent in the field of psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin. In his book "The Freudian Fraud", research psychiatrist E. Fuller-Torrey provides an account of the political and social forces which combined to raise Freud to the status of a divinity to those who needed a theoretical foundation for their political and social views. Many of the diseases which used to be treated with Freudian and related forms of therapy (such as schizophrenia) have been unequivocally demonstrated to be impervious to such treatments. Freud's notion that the child's relationship to the parent is responsible for everything from psychiatric diseases to criminal behavior has also been thoroughly discredited and the influence of such theories is today regarded as a relic of a permissive age in which "blame-the-parent" was the accepted dogma. For many decades genetic and biological causes of psychiatric disorders were dismissed without scientific investigation in favor of environmental (parental and social) influences. Today even the most extreme Freudian environmentalists would not deny the great influence of genetic and biological factors. The American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual" (the latest edition of which is the DSM-IV), the official standard for diagnosing psychological disorders in the USA, reflects the universal adoption of the neo-Kraepelinian scientific-biological approach to psychiatric disorders, with its emphasis on diagnostic precision and the search for biological and genetic etiologies--largely ignored during the earlier Freud-dominated decades of the twentieth century.
That paragraph is pretty egregiously biased; see neutral point of view. Freudians still do certainly exist in the psychiatric profession, and Freud is still taken seriously by many others as well. I'm not saying that we shouldn't include plenty of information and background on the rejection of Freud today; I'm saying that we should write this so that it isn't Wikipedia's official view that Freud was a charlatan. Among other things, what would be necessary is a reply to this from Freudians, and statements representing the number of Freudians still active today. --LMS
While LMS has to be the final judge, it might be worth pointing out that none of the statements LMS attributes to the paragraph are actually made: (1) the paragraph in question does not assert that there are no Freudians (in fact, in terms of numbers there must be hundreds of times the number of Freudian adherents today compared to any other school of psychiatry)--the paragraph referred only refers to the domination of research and refereed publications by those who take the alternative genetic-biological approach, since there is hardly anything of a scientific nature published today on Freudian theories or treatments e.g. psychotherapy for patients with any of the psychoses, except those written and published by Freud activists themselves; (2) the paragraph does not at all say that Freud "is" a charlatan--it merely states that "many leading academic and research psychiatrists regard him as a charlatan." So these are objective and indisputable facts, even though what LMS states may be perfectly correct, namely, that there in a balanced presentation there should be replies from Freudians and representations stating that Freud still has enormous influence today--for good or ill.
The concern expressed in the snipped paragraph is that there is hardly anyone informing the general public about the new developments in psychiatry and therefore most of the public and most academics outside the field of psychiatry are unaware that there is an alternative in the form of a truly scientific approach, as opposed to Freudian doctrines and practices which even Freud's fiercest proponents have long acknowledged to be beyond scientific demonstration or refutation.
The effects of Freud's notions on our society and educational system are incalculable; if he is in fact the fraud that many serious scientists now allege him to be, then it is of the utmost importance to inform the public of the available alternatives.
- I just wanted to say that I agree pretty much 100% with the above (except for the part about me having to be the final judge. I don't have to be, I don't want to be, and I shouldn't be in the vast majority of cases. I would be happy if the article simply mentioned Freud's defense, just as you describe. --LMS
My impression of the field of modern psychology is that the specifics of Freud's theories are indeed utterly dismissed as serious science except by a few holdouts, and I certainly think the article should say that (while mentioning those holdouts). The term "charlatan" is out of place though--"crackpot" might be better, or even just "grossly mistaken". "Charlatan" implies deliberate fraud for financial gain; I think most scientists today simply regard Freud as merely mistaken, not willfully deceptive. Frued is nonetheless still studied as history, and his observations of people are not questioned, just his theories. It is also worthy to note that he was the first to posit a theory of mind that spoke of independent interacting subsystems decades before modern cognitive science did, so even though he may be considered totally wrong by today's standards, he was closer to being right than anyone who came before him! --LDC
- I like 'grossly mistaken', because I don't even think he was close to being right - but then I read Thomas Szasz at an impressionable age. 'Charlatan' does imply an intentionality that I think was absent - Freud was sincere. --MichaelTinkler
- Out of curiosity, who actually says that Freud was a charlatan? I know that much of his work has been discredited -- as has much 19th and early 20th c. pioneering work -- but I think that much still stands -- enough that Freudian psyhotherapists still work and treat people without being cast out of the psychiatric community...
Many people say that Freud was a charlatan. He is often accused of lying about his results, and there is some evidence to support these charges. ~~
- "Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience" Frank Cioffi, Open Court Publishing, 1998
- "Freud's Paranoid Quest: Psychoanalysis and Modern Suspicion" John Farrell, New York University Press, 1998
- "The Death of Psychotherapy: From Freud to Alien Abductions" Donald A. Eisner, Hardcover, 2000, $63 Praeger Pub. Psychologist-attorney Eisner puts psychotherapy on trial by critically examining its effectiveness through the lens of the scientific method. From psychoanalysis to cognitive-behavior therapy as well as the 500 or so other psychotherapies, there is not a single experimental study that supports the effectiveness of psychotherapy over a placebo or religious healing. Using both case examples and clinical research, this book challenges the conclusion that there is empirical support for the notion that psychotherapy is effective.
I just revised the first half of the article, and have NPOV concerns. I think that within academic Freud is as contentious an issue as feminism or evolution or the Resurrection of Jesus are for others. I think that the criticisms of Freud, and question of whether he was a charlatan (which some scholars, I think one named Jeffrey Masson although I am sure I have mangled his last name, have raised, in earnest and with evidence, although it is a highly contested claim) are serious and I did not want to try to edit the last big paragraph, although I think it needs work. For I also thing that the critique of Freud has a lot more to do with fundamental epistemological and meta-theoretical issues and canot be reduced to the simple matter of setting up a checklist and asking for each element whether Freud was right or wrong.
So I re-wrote the first half of the article in an attempt to make clearer how his theory hangs together, and how different elements of it have been accepted or questioned, and I have tried to provide a little more information on the ways in which it has been questioned. Freud has been used in different ways in the sciences and in the humanities, and has been embraced and criticized in different ways by the left and the right. I do not think my revision does justice to the full complexity of this issue -- I hope over time others can add more context and nuance. But I hope this revision of the first half provides a bit more balance and context for the second half. -- SR
- Yep, it's Masson - his middle name is Moussaieff. I was just adding this when we had an edit conflict.
- I can't promise that the word 'charlatan' is used, but off the top of my head Thomas Szasz is a good example from the point of view of the practice of psychiatry (The Myth of Mental Illness and many, many other works). Then there are the various attackers of the foundation myths of psychoanalysis like Jeffrey Masson (The Assault on the Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory and the flood of work pro and contra it generated). There are lots of people who say worse things than 'charlatan'. I'm not saying that I believe them, but I am saying that they've sure convinced me to not believe in Freud! --MichaelTinkler
- It seems to me that a lot of the debate has been between extremes of those who practically deify Freud, and those who villify him. Although I think an article on Freud should discuss both, I think it is also important to sketch out the middle ground -- not just for the sake of NPOV but becuase there are a lot of people out there who are inspired by Freud in some ways while being sharply critical of him in others. In fact, I think the cae of Freud is emblematic of a huge chasm between the social sciences and the humanities, or betwen the human sciences and the physical sciences, that I think become inevitable when human beings study human beings. No one cares what kinds of human beings Einstein or Newton were, because we think of the physical world as existing independent of us. But people care a lot about what kind of men Marx and Freud were, since they people writing about people, members of society writing about society. I think this is an important distinction, and I do think it matters what kind of people Marx and Freud were. But I do not think that it is the only thing that matters; even if they were both horrible people who did horrible things, there still may be value and use in some of the things they wrote. I hope that the article on Freud will eventualy explore this in depth -- SR
- Good point, SR. I'm staying out of the main article, except for copyedits (like the removal of 'socialist'). The more important chasm between the humanities and the sciences is that the practicing Freudian interpreters of literature and history really don't much care whether or not what Freud has to say about the brain or the human person is true or not. It's a hermeneutic they like, so they use it, whether psychiatry, neurology, or psychoanalysis still believe in anything he said or not. I speak professionally - I live and work with these people. Many of my colleagues really and truly don't care if the Ego, Id, and Superego are 'true' or not. I team taught a class with a philosophy professor this past term who used the Freudian triad as a parallel to Plato's model of the Soul in the Republic without any critical approach at all. It was amazing. Yes, it matters what kind of person he was, but it also matters what kind of neurologist he was, since that, despite the literary critics, is his basis for speaking to us about humans. --MichaelTinkler
On another topic, what on earth was this doing as the first sentence:
- 'Sigmund Freud (May 6 1856 - September 23 1939) was a socialist Austrian neurologist,'
I removed 'socialist'. It was extraneous. If it is central to someone's take on Freud, that wikipedian will have to justify the inclusion of a political term in the first sentence by writing about Freud's politics in the article. --MichaelTinkler
My thought is that this article has become rather bloated with material that belongs in psychoanalysis or psychiatry or antipsychiatry. Hardly any room left for biography of the man. Also needs bibliography of his work and his biographers. Although the article on psychoanalysis does not need to be overwealmed by a lengthy rendition of Freud's theories; perhaps a new article "Orthodox Freudian Psychoanalysis," or something similar. FredBauder
- I do not think I agree. I do agree, that there should be more room for biography of Freud. On the other hand, it is hard for me to imagine anyone looking at this article who is not also interested in Freud's theories.
- I do agree that some things are better off in an article on psychoanalysis. But freud was not the only psychoanalyst, and there is a difference even between "Freudian" psychoanalysis and what Freud himself wrote and did.
- this would be my criteria: the Freud article should include a comprehensive discussion of Freud's work, based on books and articles he wrote, as well as biography
- and the article on psychoanalysis should have a comprehensive discussion of how others have applied Freud's theories, including discussion of debates among psychoanalysts and revisions of Freud's theories by psychoanalysis, SR
- I must admit that I was highly puzzled finding all information on Freudian psychoanalysis as part of a Signmund Freud biography. Certainly, readers of the biography would easily be able to spot a "See also: Freudian psychoanalysis". The biography and the theory are really two separate issues, however interconnected. Also, I assume "Freudian psychotheraphy" has evolved somewhat after Freuds death, which only furthers the point. -- Egil 11:36 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)
I'm surprised there is not a single mention of Karl Jung here...
- you are surprised, even reading the paragraph right above your own comment? Jung should be mentioned on a Jung page, and the relationship between Jung and Freud on a Psychoanalysis page. Slrubenstein
- I was also surprised. My vote is clearly for moving parts of the article to a separate article on Freudian psychoanalysis. In this article, it would be very natural (especially for novices) to mention Freudian vz. Jungian differences and disputes, at the very least as a "See also: Jungian". -- Egil 11:36 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)
In light of the historical trend for psychoactive drugs to be used in therapy, I am surprised there is no mention of his use of cocaine, both personally and professionally. Qaz