[posterboy]

I agree, this is pretty wild, but I also agree with the sentiment. Having studied physics I might be biased, so help me out here, please. Name one scientist from the 20th century more popular than Einstein, groups and abstract ideas are OK, too.

PS: "most successful" is ambiguous. Success is not really comparable. You can have many small successes, revolutions in fields that today feel like common knowledge and not scientific at all, and many nameless contributors. Medicin, chemistry, and many interdisciplinary fields.

Fixating on a single field only to argue in the end that all other fields are basically just subfields of ... metamatics, is funny, but missing the point. There is a large perceived disconnect between the natural sciences and "others". That's the real problem OP was pointing out, I guess.

[ordu]

It is certainly aviability heruistic[1]. You need no external help to see it, just try to remember 5 physicists and 5 psychologists and compare efforts it takes.

Someone to compare with Einstein? Freud. This guy is no less known to public, and influenced society maybe even more, by breaking taboos around sexual desires. Moreover, he shaped all the modern psychology.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

[leereeves]

But what was Freud right about?

Another measure of the success of a scientist is how well their theories stand the test of time, and by that standard, mathematical rigor probably contributes a lot.

[ordu]

> But what was Freud right about?

What was Freud wrong about? His theory is a model of human mind, which has its application even today and suits it well. It is like Newtonian mechanics and gravity: did Newton was wrong? No, he developed a model of reality that works even today.

There are a lot of other theories which replicate psychoanalysis in many aspects. Even humanistic psychology highly influenced by psychoanalysis despite of (or in spite of) negativism of Carl Rogers who didn't liked idea of explaining all of the mind work by primitive impulses. Rogers just made new model of mind by changing words and turning psychoanalysis upside down: mind is driven not by primitive impulses but by the need of self-actualization. The same eggs in a side view.

> how well their theories stand the test of time

What it means to stand the test of time? It is social sciences, not the math or physics, the landscape here is constantly shifting, nothing is true and nothing is false. The only way I see to measure the success of scientist is to measure its influence on others. If so, then Freud is the total winner among psychologists. No one even come close to him.

There are others -- Skinner, for example. But even Skinner's behavioral approach moves towards Freud ideas: now it is cognitive-behavioral approach, with hidden cognitive processes and conflicts between them. What the difference between coping strategies and defence mechanisms?

I'm not trying to say, that psychoanalysis is the best, I do not like it really. As for me it oversimplifies things. But I acknowledge influence of psychoanalysis on modern views.

[leereeves]

You haven't answered what Freud was right about. I do not deny that Freud and psychoanalysis were influential - so was Star Wars - or even that psychoanalysis can help people in specific circumstances - so can yoga - I deny that he was a scientist.

> What was Freud wrong about?

To cite just a few examples: women (penis envy, hysteria, female orgasms); psychosexual stages, including the idea that homosexuality is anal fixation; the id, ego, and superego; the oedipus complex; schizophrenia.

> nothing is true and nothing is false

Then it's not science.

[posterboy]

> Star Wars

Few people in Asia have ever heard of it. It's not as influential or popular on a global scale as one might think.

[ordu]

> You haven't answered what Freud was right about.

I don't know how to answer this. For example, he proposed two structures of mind topographical and dynamic (I'm not sure how they named in English, and I'm too lazy to search), and proposed how that layers interacts. His ideas of psychological defences, inner conflicts... Is it counts for "Freud was right", or it is too obvious now and does not look as important ideas? All the views on a mind working are highly influenced by Freud, sometimes it is hard to find his ideas in our views, because we are too accustomed for them and therefore we are unable to see them.

> To cite just a few examples: women (penis envy, hysteria, female orgasms);

Yes, and no. Histeria and similar conditions even for now are treated with regard to psychoanalitic views -- unconscious conflicts based on repression or some other psychological defence. Psychosomatic -- I attended for classes in psychosomatics and sow patients with psychosomatic conditions. The behavioral approach does not do well, because it ignores the roots of conflit which lead to strange behaviour, and one cannot cure anorexia or hysteria relying on drugs or behavioural training. Behavioural approach can change sympthoms, for example, to make a bulimia from anorexia. Or help patient to regain control of paralized hand, but then patient would start having seizures. If conflict had not resolved, than it manifest itself somehow. Patient needs to go through the breaking of psychological defenses to understanding of conflict and to resolving that conflict. The only signigicant difference from psychoanalysis is that conflict does not nessessarily comes from psychological trauma experienced at age of 6 month.

> psychosexual stages, including the idea that homosexuality is anal fixation

There are a lot of authors who developed that ideas and the stages of developmet remained the same in general, explanations was changed.

> the id, ego, and superego;

Whats wrong with them?

> the oedipus complex;

Yes, I also do not like it. But a developing sexuality of a child and a sexuality of a parent do interact somehow. The oedipus complex seems not the best way to describe this interaction, but Freud was the first researcher in the field. If we can call him a researcher -- his empirical methods was controversial indeed.

> schizophrenia

And even now no one knows what shizipheria is. Seems that diagnosis "schizophrenia" is a way to say "we don't know whats wrong with him". I agree, Freud was wrong about schizophrenia, just trying to point that modern authors also do not know.

> Then it's not science.

I think I understand your point, because I moved from tech and math into psychology, and years ago I also could say something like this -- "it is not a science". But now I think that this phrase means "is not the physics and it is not the math". Yes, social sciences are different. They are continuously failing to make formal models, written with pretty greek letters in the math language. Lack of formalization leads to a lot of problems, but I see no way to formalize the field. And I know that there are a lot of people who are much stronger than me with math and they do not see the way to create a formal models either. There are formal models for local phenomena, but very limited ones.

The lack of formalization comes from complexity of the object of research. Should we claim that science that failed to be a formal and strict because of complexity is not a science? If so, than what we should do next? To stop any attempts to make a science in this area?

Human mind is much more complex object to deal with in research than quarks. At least there are only six flavours of quarks, while all humans are different. All the social models are models which works only conditionally. In many situations no one even know what that conditions are. For any given model we can find conditions when that model would give us correct predictions. And for any given model we can find conditions under which model would fail. It is means that everything is true and everything is false. Boolean logic fails and the law of excluded middle does not works.

Social sciences are dealing with problems for which science has no ready-made tools. The reproducibility crisis is a social sciences invention, it is impossible in physics and is inevitable in social science. Now social sciences are searching for tools to fight it. Physics does not need such a complex tools, because it digs deeper, not forward. Physicists laugh at philosophy now, because they need no philosophy any more. Philosophy now all about social science problems.

So, maybe social sciences are not sciences. But at least they are meta-sciences, they are trying to build science which would be able to deal with social problems in scientific ways. And we have nothing to replace social sciences in their area.

[posterboy]

> Lack of formalization leads to a lot of problems, but I see no way to formalize the field

It seems that economics and sociology do play a role there. Both are heavy with statistics and game-theory. While Psychology is only looking at individual. Humans are more complex than fundamental particles and molecules. It's not chemistry or biology either. But Neuro-Science is most promising in this regard. "Nerven-Arzt" is a dated German term for Psychotherapist, after all.

On the other hand, what would a psychologist say to the urge to formalize everything? :)

[posterboy]

> mathematical rigor

that's very stiff.

[posterboy]

Thank you!

There is a thing to say about the beauty of maths as a universal language. In that spirit, I see Freud closer to philosophy, in the sense that philosophy is highly divided and regional.

Was freud really that influential? The "freudian slip" is certainly a very useful tool for analysis. But his "psycho analysis" is outdated, or at least overcome. And sexual freedom is progressing far slower.

Sexuality is a baseline of human development. You made a very good point.

[ordu]

His psychoanalysis maybe outdated but even now you can find orthodox psychoanalists (not just modernized version). Also there are a lot of schools that derived from orthodox psychoanalysis and moved away for some distance small or large. I believe that any psychoterapist know at least basics of psychoanalysis, can explain about id/ego/super-ego, psychological defence mechanisms, psychological resistance, transference and countertransference. There are bunch of theories of human development derived from Freud's theory psychosexual development. Even if psychoanalysis is dead (which is not true) it exists in derived works.

[k3d]

I do not generally measure the effective "success" of a scientist by their brand name recognition.

[ChrisSD]

Science is a popularity contest now?

[qntty]

Freud? Marxism?