The death of Freud?

You didn't disagree with me, instead you are accepting modern methods of psychotherapy. As you can see I already acknowledged the benefits of conscientious self-awareness. One doesn't need a long drawn out process of free association and interpretations of dreams based on libido or instinct theories to form insight into one's own thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Freud blew open a few windows that had been tight shut.

  Due to the nature of my studies,time and time again i was puzzled on how to handle Freud's contribution in Psychology in general.

Maybe it is that Neuroscience isn't strangely unable to connect to Psychology in general. This is because, Neuroscientists are like Electronic Engineers, who look at the hardware and Psychologists are like Informatic Engineers, who treat with the software and the logic that actually moves the system. I wouldn't expect to find a region of the brain that is the Superego: I'd rather see it stored in maybe separated compartments of memory but forming anyhow a very real psychic reality. You can't understand a program by looking at the CPU. 

Originally posted by Scytho-Sarmatian Well, all I can say is, I took the psychoanalysis test and according to Freud, I'm nuts. Like I said, spot on!

How much nuts? Notice that the normal person is more or less Neurotic. That's considered normal.

Guess its because we live in a sick society and we all are +/- sick therefore.

I think that Freud, despite his Patriarchal mentality that limited the scope of his exploration, did open a good window to the mind. As he dreamt: he travelled with the trasparent hat through the world, allowing people to see inside their heads (and hearts).

I think that Freud was best continued by Reich and this one by Deleuze and Guattari possibly. There are others anyhow. If D&G are right: Oedipus' complex is just a Patriarchal illness: it's not any universal. Schizophrenia is also a Capitalist product.

That may be the reason why we don't just can talk old Freud. A Jungian would be ranting (in my opinion) about universal archetypes, while a Reichian would look at all that like nothing but culturally created ghosts that just hide the Desire and the Will, the Id and the Ego, if you wish, while considering the Superego possibly just a burden.

Freud is not dead. His ideas just have evolved, as have done Humankind.

I did an on-line "psychoanalysis" test and it was "spot-on."  Freud was definitely on to something and he shouldn't be disregarded.

Freud gets his due. He came up with notions of layered unconscious. When surfaced they could be recognized, ventilated and given meaning. The psyche has three motivating forces that are still popular in modern usage - Id, Ego, Superego. Defense mechanisms were popularized by Freud. Repressed urges and thoughts are part of his mapping of the mind too.

Psychological terminology we still use today harkens back to him. So Freud gets his due.

Psycholanalysis as a therapeutic intervention is outdated though. Lounging on a comfy sofa for lengthy consecutive sessions in order to identify unconsious motivating factors takes too long.

Conscientious self awareness; the importance of rational thought; and focusing on healthy behaviors, are all newer methods of therapy that Freud had no part of. He has become outdated. A multimodal method of treatment is a better approach.

Freud (or psychoanalysis) has been declared dead many times. For instance, in an article in LA Times (2004):

The year 2000 �� the centenary of "The Interpretation of Dreams" �� should have been a triumph for Freudians. Instead, amid the celebrations was a funereal whiff of defeat: The psychoanalytic century was over before the 21st century had begun ... Psychoanalysis was indeed dead.

...

Of course, as with exorcism, the psychoanalytic "cure" hinges upon belief in mysterious entities such as the unconscious. For with belief we are back in the realm of suggestion and, at its best, the placebo effect. True, that's not nothing. But the cult-like exigencies of psychoanalysis dictate that normal human suggestibility be exploited for the cause of conversion. As Karl Kraus put it many years ago, psychoanalysis itself became the poison it purports to cure. Another way to put it is that it is psychoanalysis itself that has infected the Western soul with penis envy, Oedipal conflicts, death drives and so on. For these ideas are not given to, and cannot be found in, the world. They must be created. Consequently, the death of psychoanalysis is itself the only cathartic event psychoanalysis was ever designed to deliver.

But the question: Is Freud (and by implication, psychoanalysis) relevant? Or, as it often is phrased, "Is Freud dead?"

http://www.apsa.org/pubinfo/freudopen.htm

To the question of relevance, ... the American Psychoanalytic Association ... respond with a resounding "yes." "While some of Freud's theories about human development have been refocused, altered or even discarded, his two most important discoveries - that an individual's actions, thoughts and feelings are influenced by factors outside his or her awareness (the unconscious) and that an individual's childhood experiences have a profound influence on development and personality - remain undisputed," remarked Hoffman.

What's more, much of the language of Freud - the unconscious, repression, talking cure, slip of the tongue, free association - has become the common parlance of the 20th century, and the basis of the American Psychoanalytic Association's message: "We are all Freudians now."

...

In a 1996 Scientific American article titled "Why Freud Isn't Dead," writer John Horgan suggests that the persistence of psychoanalysis is a symptom of modern science's failure to explain the mind. Despite the periodic declarations of the death of Freud and psychoanalysis, Horgan argues that psychoanalysis will persist until an unquestionably superior theory or therapy renders psychoanalysis completely obsolete. To date, none has.

Furthermore, whatever the form of talk therapy an individual chooses - and estimates suggest there are over 400 - Freud is behind it. Psychoanalysis has been said to give a frame of reference for talk therapy in general, enabling psychiatrists and other therapists to better understand human motivation.

 

 WHAT DO YOU THINK