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by thanatropism
3192 days ago
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Anna Freud was ostensibly Sigmund's doctrinary heir. Whereas Jung, Adler, Reich and others started developing their own ideas. Jacques Lacan later claims to be a "return to Freud" too, but is entirely different. ---- The key thing to realize about psychoanalysis is that it's a sham psychological treatment in utter opposition to current scientific practices. As far as psychotherapy goes, it's basically fraudulent -- at least in the light of today's knowledge. However: in the process of building psychoanalysis, many interesting ideas about society and language and even politics were floated. These ideas are salvageable in part, IF one keeps in mind that their original goal (building a psychotherapy oriented by leading patients to sudden insights) has long been known to be a dead end. So... stop thinking psychology, the good parts in Jung and Lacan etc. are not the psychology. |
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^^^ Yes. My favorite example is that Freud's original name for "The Oedipus Complex" was "The Nuclear Complex" -- it demonstrates that he came up with the idea by noticing an interesting pattern in contemporary society (relating to the nuclear family). My speculation is that he renamed it because he believed himself to be doing Science and Medicine, rather than pure Philosophy or Sociology, and wanted the theory to be seen as more serious (and what could be more serious than invoking the ancients?).
In particular, reading Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" after having read Foucault's "History of Sexuality", a lot of the issues and commonalities Freud identifies are not so much medical conditions as they are deep insights into how living in modern society shapes us.
It's interesting to see how much of the rhetoric around "mental health" still directly stems from his writing. Such as, specifically and most controversially today, the idea that mental illness is a strictly physiological illness requiring medical treatment, rather than a set of patterns emerging from our shared social and developmental conditions.
Dream analysis is also a fun hobby, and a lot of his ideas about free association seem interesting and personally useful, although they are certainly not serious science.