Wrong but so cuddly
The Guardian hosted an email discussion of Freud and psychoanalysis between Frederick Crews and a psychoanalyst, Susie Orbach. The Guardian intro isn’t very cogent:
For a century or more, Sigmund Freud has cast a long shadow not just over the field of psychoanalysis but over the entire way we think of ourselves as human beings. His theory of the unconscious and his work on dreams, in particular, retain a firm grip on the western imagination, shaping the realms of literature and art, politics and everyday conversation, as well as the way patients are analysed in the consulting room. Since Freud’s death in 1939, however, a growing number of dissenting voices have questioned his legacy and distanced themselves from his ideas. Now Freud is viewed less as a great medical scientist than as a powerful storyteller of the human mind whose texts, though lacking in empirical evidence, should be celebrated for their literary value.
No, not that either. His stories were gripping, but they’re not stories “of the human mind.” They’re stories of Fearless Mind Detective Siggy “Sherlock” Freud, making all us Watsons gasp as he draws the strained but dogmatic interpretation out of his ass.
Orbach speaks first, and pours out a stream of tribute to Freud of the “yes maybe his science was all worthless BUT we can’t think about the mind or anything else human without drawing on him” variety. It’s fatuous.
His work has had an impact of such magnitude that it’s not possible for us to think about what it means to be human, what motivates us, what we yearn for, without those very questions being Freudian.
Freud’s conceptions of the human mind and its complexity, whether exactly accurate, are not at issue here. What is worth talking about is the way in which late-20th-century and early-21st-century culture have taken up what they have understood of his ideas.
It is very easy to dismantle the specific interpretations of Freud. Every generation does and I have done so myself. That is not to do away with Freud. Rather, it shows the strength of the edifice he created.
Honestly – what can you do with that kind of thing? It’s unfalsifiable! “Yes he was wrong about everything, but that just shows how strong he was.” It’s typical of Freud-huggers.
Many aspects of public policy, from understandings of social and interpersonal violence and racism to the construction of masculinity, sexuality, gender, war, use psychoanalytic ideas not as the explanation but as an explanatory tool aiding economic and statistical understandings of why we do the things we do.
No, they really don’t. They’d be laughed out of the room if they did.
Fred replies:
If, as you say, psychoanalytic theory has functioned as a powerfully shaping “explanatory tool”, surely it matters whether Freud’s explanations ever made empirical sense. If they didn’t, the likelihood is considerable that he raised false hopes, unfairly distributed shame and blame, retarded fruitful research and education, and caused patients’ time and money to be needlessly squandered. Indeed, all of those effects have been amply documented.
In your writings, you assert that Freud’s emphasis on the Oedipus complex was androcentric and wrong; that he misrepresented female sexual satisfaction and appears to have disapproved of it; that envy of the penis, if it exists at all, is not a key determinant of low self-esteem among women; and that his standard of normality was dictated by patriarchal bias, thus fostering “the control and subjugation of women”.
This list, which could be readily expanded, constitutes an indictment not only of harmful conclusions but also of the arbitrary, cavalier method by which they were reached. Yet elsewhere in your texts, you refer to Freud’s “discovery of the unconscious” and to his “discovery of an infantile and childhood sexuality”. Were those alleged breakthroughs achieved in a more objective manner than the “discovery” of penis envy? What are the grounds on which any of Freud’s claims deserve to be credited?
Her response is to say they’re on different planets, her job is to sit and listen, not ask all these pesky questions.
Ok so basically psychoanalysis is a brand of mysticism. Fine then, but don’t tell us it shapes how we think about everything.
To be continued, perhaps.
I took my first University PSYCH course in 1970mumble.
Freud was mentioned as part of the History Of Psychology™.
I am stunned to learn that anyone still considers anything he did to have any scientific validity.
Nobody ever thought about those things before Freud came along, you see.
I never took psychology, but I recall being told, also back in the 1970s, by a fellow student who was, that “Freud was full of shit”. So apparently even undergrads knew this 40 years ago.
Didn’t Freud himself seem to have an unhealthy obsession with his daughter? I seem to recall reading that he spent a lot of time alone with her whilst she related her masurbatory fantasies in detail (all for research purposes, you understand).
That’s a ‘Nope!’ right there.
My favourite Freudian joke (h/t Stephen Fry);
How many Freudians does it take to change a
penis, dad, mum, vaginaLIGHTBULB, that’s it; .to change a lightbulb?The persistence of Freudianism, exemplified by the desperate rationalizations of Orbach and co. really make one wonder of humans EVER get over superstition and credulity.l
Crews has written beautifully of the typical ‘new’ Freudian story. Rising analyst is troubled by X in Freudian theory, magically resolves doubt and refutes X without damaging the reputation of X’s promoter and inventor. So Freud’s actuall theory and practice are magically cleansed of SOME of his errors, without rejecting or even questioning the reckless, sloppy, authoritarian and unaccountable system he created to promote them.
Did Orbach actually reject penis envy on the basis of her experience ‘sitting and listening?’ Or has every reform been forced on the Freudian priesthood from the outside (real) world?
I suppose Freud can be said to have contributed to psychology as an irritant: developing it well, empirically, thoroughly, and on solid ground became an imperative just to prove him wrong, wrong, wrong, by people who had a pre-theoretic strong conviction that he just had to be.
He can certainly be given credit for having catchy ideas and a great ability to promote himself, but then, so can Trump, Hitler, and many others. We appreciate that sort on the basis of the results of those ideas and that self-promotion, not the sheer possession of them.
This reminds me of the “secular ” arguments religious believers sometimes come up with when defending the overwhelming need to keep religious belief front and center in public life. Just substitute the word “Freudian” for “Biblical.”
Since they filter absolutely everything through Christianity, they assume everyone else does, too. Since they can look at history and see nothing but Christian thought playing out, so it was. Since they get chills when they read the Bible, so must everyone else. Its primary importance to humanity, let alone Western culture, is just self-evident. So what if you don’t think it’s “true?” You just can’t escape the powerful impact it has had on every aspect of your life!
Yes we can, and no it hasn’t.
This is what makes the whole phenomenon so fascinating, I think – this persistence of the “Ok his science was worthless as science but it was still way deep” phenomenon, when that very phenomenon has been pointed out and illustrated in detail many times over the past several decades. I frankly find it kind of hilarious that Orbach performs that contortion for Fred when he has described and analysed (yes analysed) it so thoroughly.
chigau @1
In the early 1970s, I studied Psych 101 as an elective at Business School. I can remember writing a paper on Freud’s ‘theories’, the old charlatan was, by that time, regarded as an historical curiosity, not a scientist. As to the persistence of Freudianism, people still believe in crystals, chiropractic and homeopathy.
I was also dismayed at the way college students were treated as lab rats by some of the early psychologists.
And then the results assumed to fit the general population. This is still done a lot of the times; use your students as your study subjects, then extrapolate from this rather specialized group of Ivy League freshmen to the population as a whole.
@Ophelia
Of course, until recently a lot of people have had huge investments in Freudian theory. Lucrative and high-status careers as psychoanalysts, critics of literature, film, whatever, using psychoanalytic theories, and analysands who’d sunk tens of thousands or more into psychoanalysis (think Woody Allen), all had/have a lot riding on Freud’s reputation. All those smart, successful people couldn’t have been misled by a charlatan, could they? Freud’s theories couldn’t all be just WRONG…that’s crazy talk!
Cognitive dissonance theory accounts for it, but in this case the belief system being clung to was until fairly recently one with lots of prestige and influence.
@iknklast
When I was in college, everybody who took Psych 101 (Intro to Psychology) was required to be a “volunteer” subject in at least one psych experiment. I wonder if schools still do that. I hated it.
Lady M – Yes but the lots of prestige and influence is itself hard to understand. How did it get such a grip?
But then I’m always puzzled when bizarre ideas get a fierce grip. Like John Mack – for the life of me I cannot figure out how he managed it.
And I’ve always wondered how accurate an experiment would be with so many people forced to be there. Are they giving it their all? And if they are, are they trying to answer questions the way they think the instructor would want them to answer? My experience has been that a lot of people do not believe that they are doing things anonymously; they believe every mark they make on a survey, or every move they make in such a setting, is monitored, and they will be judged and (in the case of students) graded based not just on participating, but on how they participate. So how much can we trust any of these studies?
@ Ophelia
Compelling stories, and putting sex central at a time when Victorian squeamishness still had a hold? How could it miss?
Freudianism seems a lot like a religion, or at least a quasi-religious belief system, much like Marxism and Randism. Complete with similar apologetics. Freudianism has an inspired founder, Sigmund Freud himself, Freudians claim that some of their less supportable doctrines should be interpreted allegorically, Freudians point to the lasting cultural impact of Freudianism, Freudians think it important to “engage” with Freud’s theories, Freudianism has some colorful stories, Freud excommunicated his followers Adler and Jung because of their heresies, etc.
The notable French Freudian Jacques Lacan even pushed “a return to Freud” at one point.
Lady M – But Freud wasn’t alone in talking bluntly about sex. It’s part of the Myth that he was, but he wasn’t. And the stories aren’t really all that compelling.
Part of it is the attraction of the “things are worse, more elemental, more selfish, more sinister than you think” trope. Populist Freudism boiled down to saying no you’re not doing that for altruistic motives, you’re doing it for [insert unpleasant motivation here].
@ Loren Petrich
Oh, absolutely.
@Ophelia,
But he didn’t just talk bluntly about sex; he made it central, the big repressed life force/motivation yada yada. It was central to life stages (anal, oedipal, etc.) and the failure of a child to properly negotiate one of these “psychosexual stages” supposedly led to all sorts of neurotic problems…
Or such is my impression. But I don’t know if he was the only one to propose such theories or if his were really the most compelling stories. I’m sure is skills as a self-promoter helped!
Why do some things catch the zeitgeist and help to shape the future’s? All we can do is speculate, really. But I bet one factor was that Freud’s theories helped calm the anxieties of men (and some women) who were troubled by all the uppity feminists of the time.
Men were heroic actors in their own fateful dramas (Oedipus!).
Meanwhile women were these mutilated, envious creatures whose big life task was to accept their limitations —
Or as Norman Mailer put it, generously, “It was no more easy to become a man than to agree to be a woman.”
His theories certainly offered new ways to cast feminists as neurotic misfits. O, ever read any excerpts from Modern Woman: The Lost Sex?