I’ve had several comments, both for and against Freud’s theory.

Adam feels he’s gained a great deal from studying Freud:

I will forever be grateful to Freud for the insight that he gave me, that I was unable to find no where else. Through reading ‘Two Short Accounts of Psychoanalysis’ I was able to understand and resolve and neurotic fear that had baffled and confused me throughout most of my life.

Meanwhile, L.Klein is critical:

Freud invented a system, with no foundation, that allows for confabulation all kinds of needs, wants and desires. What I find most pernicious are the assertions that accidents, random events, and other unanticipated outcomes are somehow desired. What a fruitful mechanism for blame and false responsibility!

And Beth uses one of Freud’s commonly accepted tenets to explain behavior:

Not to sound like Freud, but it seems to me that Charles Swann was projecting his desires and feelings onto Odette. He made her into the woman he dreamed of instead of seeing her for who she really was. Good old transference…

In my opinion, Freud made a number of invaluable observations about human nature, including these:

• Our motivations are largely unconscious
• We often project and transfer our flaws and desires onto others
• We routinely engage in rationalization and self-deception

However, I disagree strongly with many of the explanations Freud offered, especially the notion that all people harbor strange desires and inappropriate urges, and are secretly driven by repressed guilt, inadequacy and fear.

These theories are so much a part of our accepted common knowledge we hardly question them. But I worry that they often cause unnecessary suffering by causing people to misunderstand themselves, to imagine false meanings and solutions, and to misjudge others. As L.Klein points out, Freud’s ideas can send people on psychological wild goose chases which waste time and heap wrongful blame.

Adam defends Freud:

Other people have taken up those ideas and re-presented and changed them in a huge variety of ways. People then respond to those re-presentations of his ideas, often, I suspect, without ever having read any one of his original works – what a perfect recipe for misunderstanding and confusion.

I agree with Adam here. Theories become diluted and twisted and misapplied as they become part of public currency (in education, Piaget’s theory of learning has suffered the same fate).

In addition, I feel we need to remember that theories evolve. Freud, studying well over 100 years ago, made excellent observations of human nature and then he concocted his best explanations for what he saw. It’s not at all surprising that, a century later,  those explanations now seem off-base, and that we are finding more accurate ones.

Do you think Freud’s ideas are helpful? Do you believe they aid us in understanding ourselves? Or do they do more harm than good?

Comments

This post currently has 5 comments/trackbacks.
You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts.

Trackbacks

From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (February 8, 2010)

    Last reviewed: 8 Feb 2010