In 2015, psychoanalyst Bradley Peterson, who is also a child psychiatrist and director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, said: "I think most people would agree that psychoanalysis as a form of treatment is on its last legs."
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/tell-it-about-yo...
Not really singing its praises.
> Nobel Laureat Eric Kandel wrote in the 90's
Sure and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman said:
> If you look at all of the complicated ideas that they have developed in an infinitesimal amount of time, if you compare to any other of the sciences how long it takes to get one idea after the other, if you consider all the structures and inventions and complicated things, the ids and the egos, the tensions and the forces, and the pushes and the pulls, I tell you they can't all be there. It's too much for one brain or a few brains to have cooked up in such a short time.
A counterexample - Tesla was also a genius Engineer but he also believed in Aliens, and doves with laser eyes, being infused by Cosmic energy.
In general, a lot of work has been done in this area, particularly by Solms https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vD4p8rQAAAAJ&hl=en...
Apropos of Tesla, this is far more than the paranoid spiritual fantasies of a genius struggling with mental illness.
I did found this gem though:
> Thus, unlike various forms of cognitive therapy and other psychotherapies, for which compelling objective evidence now exists—both as therapies in their own right and as key adjuncts to pharmacotherapy—there is as yet no compelling evidence, outside subjective impressions, that psychoanalysis works better than nonanalytically oriented therapy or placebo.
So wait. Even he admits Psychoanalysis is less useful than what we have currently. Way to bury the lede.
From what I see, this is more a rally to revive psychoanalysis on solid biological grounds, than confirmation of psycho analysis as such.
Kandel points out several connections between ideas from Freud's model and potential neuroscientific correlates. The subsequent works of Solms have further pursued these connections as a rigorous scientific project. How can you compare all of this to Feynman arguing against psychoanalysis on the basis of personally doubting someone could come up with it?
These are not marginal outsiders doing basement research. A theory being discredited means that there is a consensus in research against it. There is plenty of active research in reputable institutions both in psychoanalysis and neuroscience as I linked to explicitly, as well as in therapy research (which could be surfaced pretty easily). Many may have contested psychoanalysis, but tis is not what a discredited theory looks like.
Well, if it's not proven and verified, if it's not more useful than another theory, what is the point of it?
As the wise man once said "All models are wrong, but some are useful". Why stick with theory if its useless?
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Let me demonstrate - Geocentric system is correct. From POV fixed to Earth it's correct to say Earth is center of rotation. So they nailed the particulars. Sun and the rest of the stars/galaxies rotates relative to Earth.
However, here is the kicker. The more you want to study movement of a certain galaxy, the more cycles and epi-cycles do you need to construct. The calculations become more and more difficult. In other words - model is useless. Model with high effort to predictive power is useless.
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Is Freud right on some particulars? Yes. I do believe there is strong evidence of a subconscious and conscious process, and subconscious process being the foundation for consciousness.
But ID/EGO/SUPER-EGO? No. That probably doesn't exist. Same for his Eros/Thanatos. Same for his obsession with child sexuality (this was experimentally disproven). It's just a relic of his flawed theory and worldview. Why are people trying to resurrect it? No idea.
Instead of building a theory based on evolution, biology, psychology, people are chasing what some Victorian philosopher said as if it were a gospel.
I think you are conflating Freud's model of the mind with a couple of particulars. The id/ego/superego is not particularly central to Freud's work until it makes an appearance as the "second topography" in the 1920's. The most important part of his model involving unconscious processes are almost taken for granted by psychology today after trying to soft shoe around the idea for half a century via reductive behaviorist models that fail to substantially account for anything complex like language, culture, thought and memory.
Even if we address the second topography, why is it that it "probably doesn't exist?". Is it because Feynman doubted it? It would certainly be dogmatic to suppose that this suffices to justify this claim. Solms et al. have done a lot of work showing correlates between the model of the ego and the id and functional neuroscience, so there is work to show that they very well may exist. You cannot just assert that these things don't exist because you or Feynman don't personally buy into them. None of these researchers are taking Freud as gospel, as you seem to be taking the words of Feynman. Denying that psychoanalysis is useful means engaging in those actually working on its ideas, or even engaging in Freud's ideas substantially, and making clear arguments for why this should be treated as useless.
I'd personally go with either one that shown promise, i.e. can be used to cure people and can make testable predictions. I know it's hard, this is psychology. I think a lot of theories that shown promise are computational theories of mind.
> I think you are conflating Freud's model of the mind with a couple of particulars.
I've never read a book about Freud's model without id/ego/superego or Oedipus/Elektra complex, etc.
Like, ok. He hit the mark with conscious/unconscious. What else?
> why is it that it "probably doesn't exist?" Is it because Feynman doubted it?
Because I'm neither a psychologist nor a fortune teller. I'm not aware of any modern theory really propagating id/superego/ego as some form of structure of the mind (I could be wrong here), nor am I able to say that in future we won't discover exactly three precise parts of the mind.
So no. It's not about Feynman. It's about how Freud came with his theory of the mind and the "evidence" for it.
First. He didn't look at data and then synthesized a solution. He basically said, yeah, this looks like it, lets make conscious and subconscious. Oh, and different desires. And different parts of mind. And make them three.
Second. Psychoanalysis is essentially science based on hearsay i.e. therapist reporting their view on the patient. Yeah, no way that could be biased or distorted. I'm pretty sure I cured cancer in that one guy. He had symptoms of common cold, but I definitely cured him of cancer. Yup.
That's not how you do science. Like I know psychology is hard to do, because it's not like you can debug a person (in clear conscience).
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But Feynman is onto something. Frank Wilczek defined a beautiful theory as one you get more than you put in, or as he put it exuberance of productivity.
In lieu of that, for having all these parts and urges and egos and complexes, what does psychoanalysis do that other disciplines can't?
Instead, it seems that the question you are addressing now is whether psychoanalysis is a promising model. That is a different issue and bears upon a discussion of the theory itself. If you have never read a book about Freud's model without id/ego/superego, you don't appear to be familiar with Freud's work to begin with. Look at everything Freud wrote before 1920, and there is little mention of these things (the ego shows up some because the term in German was just "Ich" and is used anywhere a notion of "self" is referenced, but the "id" and "superego" certainly make no appearance until later). "Interpretation of Dreams", the "Introductory Lectures", the 19th century works on "Neurosis", and the metapsychological works primarily address unconscious processes, memory, repression, and other mechanisms of defense, with reference to hysteria, obsessional neurosis, paranoia, and psychosis. The id/ego/superego organization was introduced later in "The Ego and the Id" and other works around that time.
I would suggest if you are skeptical about Freud, and want to actually evaluate his ideas, and not cartoons of them, you should at least read "The Unconscious" or "Interpretation of Dreams", particularly the third part of the latter text. If you read Freud, you will see that he most certainly looks at data and syntheses solutions. Freud very clearly and methodically deduces most of his ideas from accounts of neuroses, dreams, and other mental phenomena. In the "Interpretation of Dreams" for instance, Freud discusses previous research on dreams, observes many interesting qualities of recorded dreams as well as discourse in therapy, "and then synthesized" a model of cognitive mechanisms that would account for the phenomena, among them condensation, displacement, and regression. He then goes on to further synthesize a plausible model of how these processes work in general, how memory and consciousness plays a role in them, and how these models are consistent with cognition in general. Modern research on dreams actually substantiates this fairly well thus far, taking the position that dreams are forms of memory consolidation and the consequence of "regression".
You really have to read some of this stuff and not just parrot what you have heard others say about Freud. The "Elektra Complex" is not even Freud's idea; it was an idea of Jung's that Freud was critical of.
>Plus the article is riddled with sentences like "telos of the clickbait economy is fascist kitsch."
Which basically means "the final state the clickbait economy moves forward as its inherent tendency is fascist kitsch".
>It's just empty claptrap, that could have been written in half as many words, if the writer wasn't trying to be as pretentious.
In other words, if we talked down to his audience, assuming them to being half-illiterate Joe Sixpacks.
Article mentions Freud's desire for death.
Freud theory is bunk. It's unprovable, can't be verified, useless and outdated model. If psychology as a whole has a replication issue. Freud psychoanalytics has a deeply existential issue.
> Which basically means "the final state the clickbait economy moves forward as its inherent tendency is fascist kitsch".
I know what it means. In the end you didn't explain much, just explained what telos is.
Let me help - Clickbait economy is a rage generator.
> other words, if we talked down to his audience, assuming them to being half-illiterate Joe Sixpacks.
I read my fair share of philosophers, I understand what he's trying to say. However it's all been said better and more eloquently by CCP Grey in his video on memes.
Any halfwit, pompous, rudderless, telos lacking humanities reject could have written, a long, detalied, baroque word salad if the whippersnapper in question was so inclined - much like this sentence.
Real artistry isn't saying as much as you can, but saying as much as you can in as few and understandable words.
To quote a poet "Brevity is the soul of wit".
Yes. Which is not the same as a caricature of Freudian analysis.
>Freud theory is bunk. It's unprovable, can't be verified
Not everything has to be verified. This tendency of Anglosaxons/Analyticals to want to "verify" everything is bunk. Heck, it's itself unprovable and can't be verified (you can't verify the need for verification -- in the end you always get to some unverified tenets you need to begin, e.g. utilitarianism).
>To quote a poet "Brevity is the soul of wit".
To quote another poet: "I have heard many people say, "Give me the ideas, it is no matter what words you put them into.... Ideas cannot be given but in their minutely appropriate words".
Not everything can be verified. However a self proposed science that isn't verified is just philosophy. Hence, my four elements from Aristotle.
What Freudian psychoanalysis has is a semblance of science. It reminds me of quacks selling quantum energies to cure your back problems. Only instead of quantum its Phlogiston.
> Heck, it's itself unprovable and can't be verified
An unprovable science is just philosophizing.
As for verification can't itself be verified. Purely theoretically - yes. However. Purely theoretically you could use a rock enchanted by your local witch doctor to send me this message.
Are you using such device (not based on science, and verification but magical powers) to communicate?
My point is, verification is based on things working in the real world, which psychoanalysis for the most part doesn't.
No, but that's probably a coincidence more than anything else. Other cultures have used such methods, and were satisfied by them!
We might say "sure, but they were ignorant, those methods didn't work", etc. -- but if they had no qualms about them at the time, our objection is somewhat moot...
That's a quote from the book, which the reviewer does say "...some will find unbearably pretentious"
However, still doesn't address my issue. It's talking circles and full of fun word phrases like "chronophage", "pettifogger".
> That's a quote from the book, which the reviewer does say "...some will find unbearably pretentious"
Sure. He found it charming. No wonder why.
And I found the review fairly amusing for a while. It cited some competing theories, including the book's theory which, despite psychoanalysis equating to people pulling complex theories out of their favorite orifice, was still a rather interesting theory worth thinking about.
Certainly it beat a lot of articles about "fixing" social media which often seem to be little more than attempts at maximizing ad revenue by packing in lots of references to famous recent outrages and/or Trump (who barely got a mention here).
The author talks about the good of social media as such:
> street uprising of the late spring felt like its joyous opposite—a future in which platforms were responding to and being structured by the events on the ground, rather than those events being structured by and shaped to the demands of the platforms. This was something worth our time and devotion... As people in the streets toppled statues and fought police...
And talks about the perils and evils of social media as such:
> promoting people who exist only to be explained to, people to whom the world has been created anew every morning, people for whom every settled sociological, scientific, and political argument of modernity must be rehashed, rewritten, and re-accounted, this time with their participation. These people, with their just-asking questions and vapid open letters, are dullards and bores, pettifoggers and casuists, cowards and dissemblers... That we get some kind of fulfillment from tedious debates about “free speech” and “cancel culture.” ... why not spend a few decades of it with a couple New York Times op-ed columnists, rebuilding all of Western thought from first principles?
Plus the article is riddled with sentences like "telos of the clickbait economy is fascist kitsch."
It's just empty claptrap, that could have been written in half as many words, if the writer wasn't trying to be as pretentious.