What do we think of him and his progeny? Reading Moses and Monotheism at the moment, and it always has the feeling that almost everything we take for granted in contemporary thought (detached psychological interpretation, segmented and categorized mental processes, etc) is simply downstream of Freud's work. I can't claim to be a Freudian, or really knowledgeable in his work at all, but it is always an interesting, invigorating affair. Something about his ability to almost unify the world in a singular theory, a theory which is not without its leaps and near-insanity, feels akin to reading Plato for the first time. Anyway: thoughts?
Anonymous :
6 days ago :
No.8892
>>8894
>>8892
Are you saying he gets more respect than he should because of the dreary state of psychology today? Or that he should get less respect than he does now?
If psychology today wasn't so pozzed he would be considered an outdated "kinda okay for the time" type of figure. Like Marxian economics or phlogiston theory.
The 3 men who defined the 20th century were Freud, Marx, and Einstein. Einstein led the Leviathans to their apocalypse-weapons. Marx gave us one of the Leviathans. Freud gave the other Leviathan something to fight for -- a post-Romantic reason to center politics on the individual.
Arguably this saved liberalism. Once the Georgists failed to win electorally (Henry George in the 1890s, the Lloyd George ministry in the prewar period), liberalism had kind of run out of answers to the problems of the 20th century. Socialists and anarchists were the ones who had political solutions to offer, and later the fascists wedged in with racialist politics. In the midcentury the western powers staked all of their political power on an individualized account of liberty. 'Sure,' many western thinkers conceded, 'the fascists might be able to make the trains run on time; USSR might be able to clothe and feed the poor better. But consider the cost to your personal liberty.' Freud gave liberalism a liberal subject that didn't require belief in Enlightenment or romantic philosophy.
Consider the counterfactuals. If liberalism had to go toe-to-toe with fascism and communism premised on a Burkean or Jeffersonian sense of the individual, then it's hard to imagine they would have the resolve to do much. It's hard to imagine a bunch of 18 year olds digging ditches in Korea in the name of Burkean social liberty and respect for the authority of the dead. Without Freud, I think that liberalism would have become much more Nietzschean in its conception of the individual. You see some shoots of this in Rorty's writings on Nietzsche: he outlines potential a fusion between Nietzsche and William James. So you might see the Bloomsbury set talking about "making art out of their own lives" instead of laying on the therapist's couch.
Anonymous :
5 days ago :
No.8894
>>8898
>>8894
Both — his theories were useful at the time, but our understanding of neurology and childhood psychology today allows us to discard a good amount of his theories outright. Oedipus is, at best, a useful abstraction.
Even then, everyone publishing today is just as abstract and unfalsifiable as Freud, except they don’t have the excuse of not knowing neurological development timelines, empirical data around therapeutic interventions, brain organoid studies, etc. Bessel Van Der Kolk prime example.
It’s like, the Body Keeps The Score is to Freud as rent control policy is to Marx. Not strictly related, but vaguely gesturing in the direction of an also-wrong but far more intelligent theory.
>>8892
If psychology today wasn't so pozzed he would be considered an outdated "kinda okay for the time" type of figure. Like Marxian economics or phlogiston theory.
Are you saying he gets more respect than he should because of the dreary state of psychology today? Or that he should get less respect than he does now?
Anonymous :
5 days ago :
No.8898
>>8899
>>8898
What's wrong with The Body Keeps the Score? I understand that it's pop psychology at best, but what is specifically wrong about it?
I'm asking because I can't see it. It's been helpful up to a point, then it goes round in circles (like most fads, maybe? It offers new understanding, then it stops being useful).
>>8894
>>8892
Are you saying he gets more respect than he should because of the dreary state of psychology today? Or that he should get less respect than he does now?
Both — his theories were useful at the time, but our understanding of neurology and childhood psychology today allows us to discard a good amount of his theories outright. Oedipus is, at best, a useful abstraction.
Even then, everyone publishing today is just as abstract and unfalsifiable as Freud, except they don’t have the excuse of not knowing neurological development timelines, empirical data around therapeutic interventions, brain organoid studies, etc. Bessel Van Der Kolk prime example.
It’s like, the Body Keeps The Score is to Freud as rent control policy is to Marx. Not strictly related, but vaguely gesturing in the direction of an also-wrong but far more intelligent theory.
>>8898
>>8894
Both — his theories were useful at the time, but our understanding of neurology and childhood psychology today allows us to discard a good amount of his theories outright. Oedipus is, at best, a useful abstraction.
Even then, everyone publishing today is just as abstract and unfalsifiable as Freud, except they don’t have the excuse of not knowing neurological development timelines, empirical data around therapeutic interventions, brain organoid studies, etc. Bessel Van Der Kolk prime example.
It’s like, the Body Keeps The Score is to Freud as rent control policy is to Marx. Not strictly related, but vaguely gesturing in the direction of an also-wrong but far more intelligent theory.
What's wrong with The Body Keeps the Score? I understand that it's pop psychology at best, but what is specifically wrong about it?
I'm asking because I can't see it. It's been helpful up to a point, then it goes round in circles (like most fads, maybe? It offers new understanding, then it stops being useful).