Doubts about my future profession - Please Input

[Cainad (dec.)]

 

I think PD's advice is loud and clear Joh'Nyx: Find some material by authors throughout the years who have disagreed with Freud.

I'm not well educated in psychological theory or practice, but I've heard from quite a few sources that his ideas have been either rejected wholesale or heavily modified by just about everyone.

And, if you think about it, this guy was a pioneer in his field, working in the cultural context of turn-of-the-last-century Europe. If his work hadn't been taken apart and re-examined and found to be wanting in certain areas after all this time, I think I'd be pretty suspicious.

If I knew more about the subject I'd recommend some authors. Hopefully some other posters can help with that.

[The Johnny]

Maybe because you dont know the terminology its the reason why it sounds like gibberish.

[Doktor Howl]

Maybe because you dont know the terminology its the reason why it sounds like gibberish.

If you can't explain yourself to a layman, either

1.  You don't understand the work, or

2.  It's crap.

[Kai]

I think PD's advice is loud and clear Joh'Nyx: Find some material by authors throughout the years who have disagreed with Freud.

I'm not well educated in psychological theory or practice, but I've heard from quite a few sources that his ideas have been either rejected wholesale or heavily modified by just about everyone.

And, if you think about it, this guy was a pioneer in his field, working in the cultural context of turn-of-the-last-century Europe. If his work hadn't been taken apart and re-examined and found to be wanting in certain areas after all this time, I think I'd be pretty suspicious.

If I knew more about the subject I'd recommend some authors. Hopefully some other posters can help with that.

Seriously. How is it that Freud is accepted wholesale by some people? I mean, biologists generally revere Darwin and his work, but we don't exactly still argue about pangenesis now do we? We have mendelian genetics.

In the same sense, why are we still arguing about Freud's silly hypotheses that are much like pangenesis was for Darwin: forward thinking, and dead wrong.

[Jasper]

And the only "terminology" you've used is "death pulsion".  Which is termed "death drive", since pulsion isn't properly a word.

[Kai]

Maybe because you dont know the terminology its the reason why it sounds like gibberish.

That sounds suspiciously like occult studies, like something masons might say.

[Doktor Howl]

Maybe because you dont know the terminology its the reason why it sounds like gibberish.

That sounds suspiciously like occult studies, like something masons might say.

Or Wiccans, for that matter.

[The Johnny]

Yeah, hate to say it but his work isn't systematically consistent with it's axioms, or even logically deduced to begin with, so you must have meant "true" instead of valid.  

And it's not true because it makes several theoretical claims (eros/thanatos for instance) to explain its findings which aren't very defensible.  It's more art than science, and I dislike it because it's the reason studies of the mind have such a hard time being treated like proper science.

And calling psychoanalysis "science" of any kind is ridiculous.  It is not at all based in empiricism.

I meant true, not valid, but now that you bring it up, whats the incongruence between the works and the axioms?

So which studies of the mind would you call as proper science? Neurology?

Are you saying psycho-analysis is just speculation? What about all the case studies that have been made?

And you didnt respond my previous questions.

[Doktor Howl]

So which studies of the mind would you call as proper science? Neurology?

Yes.

What you're doing may be useful, but that doesn't make it science.

[Jasper]

No, I didn't.

[Kai]

Are you saying psycho-analysis is just speculation? What about all the case studies that have been made?

Well, acknowledging that psychiatry, psycho-analysis and mental health therapy are supposed to be methods for making a person functional in society, rather than an accurate model of the mind, is a good first start.

IOW, yes I am. It's an art, not a science. Not that it's not USEFUL. I definitely wouldn't say that therapy isn't useful. It's just not science. There's no replication, the experiments are completely flawed in their design, and the conclusions and inferences are often based on completely made up evidence based in the cognitive biases of the therapist. If it is science, it's really really REALLY bad science. So no, it's not science. I don't think you actually have the balls to back up your claims in the manner that even social science demands.

[The Johnny]

I think PD's advice is loud and clear Joh'Nyx: Find some material by authors throughout the years who have disagreed with Freud.

I'm not well educated in psychological theory or practice, but I've heard from quite a few sources that his ideas have been either rejected wholesale or heavily modified by just about everyone.

And, if you think about it, this guy was a pioneer in his field, working in the cultural context of turn-of-the-last-century Europe. If his work hadn't been taken apart and re-examined and found to be wanting in certain areas after all this time, I think I'd be pretty suspicious.

If I knew more about the subject I'd recommend some authors. Hopefully some other posters can help with that.

That's something ive considered, mostly ive read about issues from different perspectives, but not texts specifically oriented towards criticisms.

Psycho-analysis is more than Freud, but a lot of the criticisms are indeed targeted at him, for he's the only author the mainstream culture knows about. As i stated in the OP, i have heard a lot of cheap-shot criticisms, but nothing substantial.

I wonder if the "Black Book of Psycho-Analysis" has good content.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Don't get too agitated or defensive about this, Joh'Nyx. You've stumbled upon a subject which has many and varied facets to it, and there's a LOT to be learned about it. That doesn't mean that what you've learned thus far is invalid or worthless; it just means there's a lot more to it than you may have realized when you started this thread.

Psychology is a fascinating subject, and it's worth understanding Freud so as to understand the influence he had on the study of the human mind over the past century. But it's also important to find out what's been learned since then; this is true even in the "hard" sciences (physics, biology, chemistry, etc).



Remember:
"A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads"

[Kai]

Also, if I ever had a therapist "psychoanalyze" me in a way I could tell that he was using Freudian bullshit or jungian archetypes or any of that old mystical silliness to tell me what was wrong with me and try to help me function better, I would walk out.

Might as well take snake oil and bleed myself with leeches, if we're going that route. It's like psychological medicine haddn't advanced in the last 100 years.

[Jasper]

I'm not dismissing psychoanalysis out of hand as completely useless.  Talk therapy helps a lot of people.

I just come from the exact opposite philosophical end of the spectrum, in my psych studies, and it rankles me deeply when Freudians, Jungians, and their ilk call their methods science.