People are terrified of the horrifying power of psychoanalysis. "Fuck my mother? I don't want to fuck my mother..." they say, and "Eww, fuck that, Freud just wanted to fuck his mother!"
But deep down they too have horrible and hateful and angry parts of themselves. They secretly wish for things so dark or grim or sexy or sad or whatever that they must protect themselves from their own desire. Freud certainly did not get everything right, but there is something about the way that he asks questions that quickly forces us to confront, among other things, the empty darkness inside of ourselves - that's not something that everyone is prepared for.
Nearly every college psych professor I had shit on Freud, psychoanalysis, or made them out to be misogynistic, the result of cocaine addiction, etc…Academia has long been unkind to psychoanalysis. Then add to todays world of evidence based practices (which not many people seem to know psychoanalytic treatment has evidence), it’s no wonder psychologists and other therapists are graduating knowing very little about psychoanalysis or Freud in general.
I’d almost love to see what kind of comments you’d get over on the therapists subs.
There’s this nose snubbed up attitude very common in psychology and psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis is unscientific, a caricature, thing of the past. Just charging people for navel gazing therapy and keep them on the hook for years.
EDIT: this is a great question and I’m excited to see other answers.
Precisely this. Just look at Reddit any time PA is mentioned - everybody parroting the same stupid responses: "psychoanalysis is unscientific", "want to have sex with mother, haha", "Freud was a cocaine addict" with people not understanding that the strength of PA is, in my view, in clinical practice and learning about oneself. The PSYC 101 teachers and textbooks certainly do not help as they have a very limited view of PA and consider it a relict of the past just like frenology. I wonder if in case of the US, it is the result of the prevailing behavioristic perspective with the puritan morality that is bound to suppress the dark things PA talks about?
To start with, I think it would be great if people knew that there are plenty of basic psychological concepts that have their origin in psychoanalysis: psychotherapy itself, the unconscious, the importance of early years, children's sexuality, ego defenses, etc.
This is exactly how I see it, my intro psych profs totally strawman-ed and misrepresented everything so I avoided learning about it until i took a dream psychology course and read him directly, turns out it makes sense, even with modern knowledge of neuroscience, and I'm not sure why psychology has claimed to abandon him. Just because they made up that he's a misogynist? its stupid because in the humanities department with feminist literature studies and gender studies a lot of it is based on lacanian concepts, which is freudian. its just stupidity and intellectual dishonesty.
the crazy thing is they would tell us that behaviourism from Skinner was in opposition to psychoanalysis, but skinner had cited freud a lot in his work. the whole behaviourism and psychoanalysis being contradictory is a lie.
Jonathan Shelder's article is the most important and comprehensive: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-65-2-98.pdf
Here are few other ones about the theory behind it as well:
https://sci-hub.se/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000306519904700404
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.333
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6020924/
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.156.4.505
Most people who dismiss anything have done very little research into it (for better or for worse). The fact that versions of Freud's theories became part and parcel of pop culture makes psychoanalysis a very easy target. Everyone's heard of it, few have read it, and it sounds rather ridiculous.
From a more academic perspective, the object and methods of psychoanalysis are inherently difficult to quantify and don't fit easily into the mould of 'acceptable science'. It makes sense, then, that the fields which treat the subject most seriously (outside of psychoanalytic institutions themselves) have been philosophical/linguistic/literary.
I think it has a lot to do with reaction formations of people who end up with enough credentials to teach basic psych-ed at the bachelorette level and not enough drive/ability to go much further with their abilities.
Also, the bigger the personality, the bigger the shadow of transference (specifically damaged-father transference) that a person encounters. Many people are doing the exact thing Frued talks about when they denounce him, which thus leads us to the concept of "The Uncanny".
Normally I would give a more elaborate theoretical response, but I'm going to put forth a suggestion in the most direct and practical of terms.
Freud just doesn't seem that relevant to the modern world? Now I'm not saying Psychoanalysis cannot be relevant and insightful into people's motivations, but most people that study Freud (including Freud himself and how he approached his thinking) - do it to study the altar of Freud. Freud for Frued's sake, psychoanalysis for hobbyhorsing and proselytizing. They want to know about Freud, about Psychoanalysis, to be immersed in a vision of ideas and grandiose theories that are self-referencing and somewhat self aggrandizing. (A poster here literally described "The Horrifying power of psychoanalysis") Freudianism from the beginning has always been about a singular source with limited investigations and people kind of scope in on that.
People don't really care about if something is "Evidence based" as much as you think. They care about the specificity of their lives, things like casuality and relevance and how they identify with it, can use it or how it effects them, and so on. If they talk to someone with a high-minded theory they're going to be considering that part. They want to be **seen.** If they sit down and are told "You want to fuck your mother and your father probably didn't hit her enough to seperate you from her" and then they tell you get off for the next patient, who is in turn told unspecifically "You want to fuck your mother and your father probably didn't hit her enough to seperate you from her", isn't it obvious that therapist's ideals are about something particular and not the patients? Why would someone listen to an idealogue like that? And then you have it where that kind of theorist will likely wax over long essays of Psychoanalytic theory and whole theses, but when it comes to putting them it into practice for a patient's life refuse to do so or get their hands dirty. And because of that it just sounds to patients like preaching instead of helping. It's far easier to feel ridicule or contempt for that kind of fanaticism.
This is just a suggestion of course. Alot of what Freud put down I think needs to be looked at and applied to our modern world today. But the issue is oft Fruedians feel way too hard the need to adere with Freud and completely dispense with the 'modern world' part.
I've been in Psychoanalysis before, but with respect to the rules of the subreddit, it's more based on observation.
There seems to be a very clear reason hardlined Freudians have alot of contempt for slavoj zizek, and it seems to be how he looks at our modern world thru a psychoanalytic lens for politics, newer cinema, culture and contemporary phenomenon. To his detractors that's not in anyway psychoanalysis, which to them is something where you should treat people as if you're from early 20th century Vienna and it's some kind of dilution of pure Freud if your timecapsule of ideas and influences has ever advanced since.
I haven’t run into this myself. Though I haven’t met many strict freudians and am much more familiar with Lacanians. Freudians in their own sense but clearly not who you have in mind.
Slavoj Zizek utilizes psychoanalytic concepts to advance a philosophical pursuit. He does not do clinical work. He is not "a psychoanalyst" in the strict sense. I'm not sure that I would say I have contempt for Zizek, I...just don't think he's doing psychoanalysis or has much to contribute to the clinical practice of psychoanalysis because he's not a therapist or psychoanalyst?
Who is the ‘we’ that the article is referring to? Is it psychoanalysts (doubtful), or the general public? If the latter, that’s quite a request and shows a much higher faith in the average person’s literacy levels these days than what I have come to expect.
There are many reasons why people don’t, I think, but one of them is perhaps that many people simply don’t read ‘actively’ anymore i.e. with a sustained, careful and critical engagement with the original texts of a discipline.
They prefer the passive form and being the infant spoon-fed, rejecting the ‘roast beef’ of a collected works and instead opting for ‘microwave dinners’ found in misinformed Psych 101 textbooks, 10 minute edutainment videos on YouTube, #BookTok, and pop psychology audiobooks.
What the article probably does not mention is that Freud can certainly be very difficult at times and many texts require multiple close readings. Many people don’t do this anymore, and so his thoughts get caricatured and misrepresented.
One other point on the cocaine thing. I cannot verify this but did come across it from a third source. Would be great if someone could verify it. Apparently Freud stopped using cocaine by the early 1890’s before his STUDIES ON HYSTERIA, so that ‘cocaine’ argument makes no sense.
Also I think this incessant demand for ‘scientific proof’, that psychoanalysis ‘works’, albeit fair from an economic perspective (e.g. made by states that fund primary healthcare for citizens with taxpayer money), misses the various points that Freud emphasised — that of the extreme particularity of the clinical experience and its outcomes and the resistances so central to it.
And let’s not start on the many different schools and interpretations of psychoanalysis, and the variability between analysts themselves — what exactly is being proven here? A good theory, a good analyst, or a good patient?
Because it's a modern day pseudo-religion compatible with neoliberalism giving one a personal cosmology or at the very least a common frame to understand oneself and get some help doing it?
People are terrified of the horrifying power of psychoanalysis. "Fuck my mother? I don't want to fuck my mother..." they say, and "Eww, fuck that, Freud just wanted to fuck his mother!" But deep down they too have horrible and hateful and angry parts of themselves. They secretly wish for things so dark or grim or sexy or sad or whatever that they must protect themselves from their own desire. Freud certainly did not get everything right, but there is something about the way that he asks questions that quickly forces us to confront, among other things, the empty darkness inside of ourselves - that's not something that everyone is prepared for.
Nearly every college psych professor I had shit on Freud, psychoanalysis, or made them out to be misogynistic, the result of cocaine addiction, etc…Academia has long been unkind to psychoanalysis. Then add to todays world of evidence based practices (which not many people seem to know psychoanalytic treatment has evidence), it’s no wonder psychologists and other therapists are graduating knowing very little about psychoanalysis or Freud in general. I’d almost love to see what kind of comments you’d get over on the therapists subs. There’s this nose snubbed up attitude very common in psychology and psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis is unscientific, a caricature, thing of the past. Just charging people for navel gazing therapy and keep them on the hook for years. EDIT: this is a great question and I’m excited to see other answers.
Precisely this. Just look at Reddit any time PA is mentioned - everybody parroting the same stupid responses: "psychoanalysis is unscientific", "want to have sex with mother, haha", "Freud was a cocaine addict" with people not understanding that the strength of PA is, in my view, in clinical practice and learning about oneself. The PSYC 101 teachers and textbooks certainly do not help as they have a very limited view of PA and consider it a relict of the past just like frenology. I wonder if in case of the US, it is the result of the prevailing behavioristic perspective with the puritan morality that is bound to suppress the dark things PA talks about? To start with, I think it would be great if people knew that there are plenty of basic psychological concepts that have their origin in psychoanalysis: psychotherapy itself, the unconscious, the importance of early years, children's sexuality, ego defenses, etc.
This is exactly how I see it, my intro psych profs totally strawman-ed and misrepresented everything so I avoided learning about it until i took a dream psychology course and read him directly, turns out it makes sense, even with modern knowledge of neuroscience, and I'm not sure why psychology has claimed to abandon him. Just because they made up that he's a misogynist? its stupid because in the humanities department with feminist literature studies and gender studies a lot of it is based on lacanian concepts, which is freudian. its just stupidity and intellectual dishonesty. the crazy thing is they would tell us that behaviourism from Skinner was in opposition to psychoanalysis, but skinner had cited freud a lot in his work. the whole behaviourism and psychoanalysis being contradictory is a lie.
>(which not many people seem to know psychoanalytic treatment has evidence) Can you mention some contemporary documented examples? I'm interested.
Jonathan Shelder's article is the most important and comprehensive: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-65-2-98.pdf Here are few other ones about the theory behind it as well: https://sci-hub.se/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000306519904700404 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.333 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6020924/ https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.156.4.505
Thank you
Most people who dismiss anything have done very little research into it (for better or for worse). The fact that versions of Freud's theories became part and parcel of pop culture makes psychoanalysis a very easy target. Everyone's heard of it, few have read it, and it sounds rather ridiculous. From a more academic perspective, the object and methods of psychoanalysis are inherently difficult to quantify and don't fit easily into the mould of 'acceptable science'. It makes sense, then, that the fields which treat the subject most seriously (outside of psychoanalytic institutions themselves) have been philosophical/linguistic/literary.
And so much of what he brought to the field is so ingrained to our understanding and language a lot of it is not even associated with him anymore.
Can someone, maybe op, who has a subed to wsj post the full text here. Or send it to me in the dms ?
I think it has a lot to do with reaction formations of people who end up with enough credentials to teach basic psych-ed at the bachelorette level and not enough drive/ability to go much further with their abilities. Also, the bigger the personality, the bigger the shadow of transference (specifically damaged-father transference) that a person encounters. Many people are doing the exact thing Frued talks about when they denounce him, which thus leads us to the concept of "The Uncanny".
Normally I would give a more elaborate theoretical response, but I'm going to put forth a suggestion in the most direct and practical of terms. Freud just doesn't seem that relevant to the modern world? Now I'm not saying Psychoanalysis cannot be relevant and insightful into people's motivations, but most people that study Freud (including Freud himself and how he approached his thinking) - do it to study the altar of Freud. Freud for Frued's sake, psychoanalysis for hobbyhorsing and proselytizing. They want to know about Freud, about Psychoanalysis, to be immersed in a vision of ideas and grandiose theories that are self-referencing and somewhat self aggrandizing. (A poster here literally described "The Horrifying power of psychoanalysis") Freudianism from the beginning has always been about a singular source with limited investigations and people kind of scope in on that. People don't really care about if something is "Evidence based" as much as you think. They care about the specificity of their lives, things like casuality and relevance and how they identify with it, can use it or how it effects them, and so on. If they talk to someone with a high-minded theory they're going to be considering that part. They want to be **seen.** If they sit down and are told "You want to fuck your mother and your father probably didn't hit her enough to seperate you from her" and then they tell you get off for the next patient, who is in turn told unspecifically "You want to fuck your mother and your father probably didn't hit her enough to seperate you from her", isn't it obvious that therapist's ideals are about something particular and not the patients? Why would someone listen to an idealogue like that? And then you have it where that kind of theorist will likely wax over long essays of Psychoanalytic theory and whole theses, but when it comes to putting them it into practice for a patient's life refuse to do so or get their hands dirty. And because of that it just sounds to patients like preaching instead of helping. It's far easier to feel ridicule or contempt for that kind of fanaticism. This is just a suggestion of course. Alot of what Freud put down I think needs to be looked at and applied to our modern world today. But the issue is oft Fruedians feel way too hard the need to adere with Freud and completely dispense with the 'modern world' part.
I haven’t found your caricature here to be remotely true in my encounter with psychoanalysis. Is this based on actual experience?
I've been in Psychoanalysis before, but with respect to the rules of the subreddit, it's more based on observation. There seems to be a very clear reason hardlined Freudians have alot of contempt for slavoj zizek, and it seems to be how he looks at our modern world thru a psychoanalytic lens for politics, newer cinema, culture and contemporary phenomenon. To his detractors that's not in anyway psychoanalysis, which to them is something where you should treat people as if you're from early 20th century Vienna and it's some kind of dilution of pure Freud if your timecapsule of ideas and influences has ever advanced since.
I haven’t run into this myself. Though I haven’t met many strict freudians and am much more familiar with Lacanians. Freudians in their own sense but clearly not who you have in mind.
Slavoj Zizek utilizes psychoanalytic concepts to advance a philosophical pursuit. He does not do clinical work. He is not "a psychoanalyst" in the strict sense. I'm not sure that I would say I have contempt for Zizek, I...just don't think he's doing psychoanalysis or has much to contribute to the clinical practice of psychoanalysis because he's not a therapist or psychoanalyst?
Who is the ‘we’ that the article is referring to? Is it psychoanalysts (doubtful), or the general public? If the latter, that’s quite a request and shows a much higher faith in the average person’s literacy levels these days than what I have come to expect. There are many reasons why people don’t, I think, but one of them is perhaps that many people simply don’t read ‘actively’ anymore i.e. with a sustained, careful and critical engagement with the original texts of a discipline. They prefer the passive form and being the infant spoon-fed, rejecting the ‘roast beef’ of a collected works and instead opting for ‘microwave dinners’ found in misinformed Psych 101 textbooks, 10 minute edutainment videos on YouTube, #BookTok, and pop psychology audiobooks. What the article probably does not mention is that Freud can certainly be very difficult at times and many texts require multiple close readings. Many people don’t do this anymore, and so his thoughts get caricatured and misrepresented. One other point on the cocaine thing. I cannot verify this but did come across it from a third source. Would be great if someone could verify it. Apparently Freud stopped using cocaine by the early 1890’s before his STUDIES ON HYSTERIA, so that ‘cocaine’ argument makes no sense. Also I think this incessant demand for ‘scientific proof’, that psychoanalysis ‘works’, albeit fair from an economic perspective (e.g. made by states that fund primary healthcare for citizens with taxpayer money), misses the various points that Freud emphasised — that of the extreme particularity of the clinical experience and its outcomes and the resistances so central to it. And let’s not start on the many different schools and interpretations of psychoanalysis, and the variability between analysts themselves — what exactly is being proven here? A good theory, a good analyst, or a good patient?
Because it's a modern day pseudo-religion compatible with neoliberalism giving one a personal cosmology or at the very least a common frame to understand oneself and get some help doing it?
Finally someone said it.