| > At the moment, there is no canonically useful model of the mind that is established in the consensus of those who study it. I'd personally go with either one that shown promise, i.e. can be used to cure people and can make testable predictions. I know it's hard, this is psychology. I think a lot of theories that shown promise are computational theories of mind. > I think you are conflating Freud's model of the mind with a couple of particulars. I've never read a book about Freud's model without id/ego/superego or Oedipus/Elektra complex, etc. Like, ok. He hit the mark with conscious/unconscious. What else? > why is it that it "probably doesn't exist?" Is it because Feynman doubted it? Because I'm neither a psychologist nor a fortune teller. I'm not aware of any modern theory really propagating id/superego/ego as some form of structure of the mind (I could be wrong here), nor am I able to say that in future we won't discover exactly three precise parts of the mind. So no. It's not about Feynman. It's about how Freud came with his theory of the mind and the "evidence" for it. First. He didn't look at data and then synthesized a solution. He basically said, yeah, this looks like it, lets make conscious and subconscious. Oh, and different desires. And different parts of mind. And make them three. Second. Psychoanalysis is essentially science based on hearsay i.e. therapist reporting their view on the patient. Yeah, no way that could be biased or distorted. I'm pretty sure I cured cancer in that one guy. He had symptoms of common cold, but I definitely cured him of cancer. Yup. That's not how you do science. Like I know psychology is hard to do, because it's not like you can debug a person (in clear conscience). ------ But Feynman is onto something. Frank Wilczek defined a beautiful theory as one you get more than you put in, or as he put it exuberance of productivity. In lieu of that, for having all these parts and urges and egos and complexes, what does psychoanalysis do that other disciplines can't? |
Instead, it seems that the question you are addressing now is whether psychoanalysis is a promising model. That is a different issue and bears upon a discussion of the theory itself. If you have never read a book about Freud's model without id/ego/superego, you don't appear to be familiar with Freud's work to begin with. Look at everything Freud wrote before 1920, and there is little mention of these things (the ego shows up some because the term in German was just "Ich" and is used anywhere a notion of "self" is referenced, but the "id" and "superego" certainly make no appearance until later). "Interpretation of Dreams", the "Introductory Lectures", the 19th century works on "Neurosis", and the metapsychological works primarily address unconscious processes, memory, repression, and other mechanisms of defense, with reference to hysteria, obsessional neurosis, paranoia, and psychosis. The id/ego/superego organization was introduced later in "The Ego and the Id" and other works around that time.
I would suggest if you are skeptical about Freud, and want to actually evaluate his ideas, and not cartoons of them, you should at least read "The Unconscious" or "Interpretation of Dreams", particularly the third part of the latter text. If you read Freud, you will see that he most certainly looks at data and syntheses solutions. Freud very clearly and methodically deduces most of his ideas from accounts of neuroses, dreams, and other mental phenomena. In the "Interpretation of Dreams" for instance, Freud discusses previous research on dreams, observes many interesting qualities of recorded dreams as well as discourse in therapy, "and then synthesized" a model of cognitive mechanisms that would account for the phenomena, among them condensation, displacement, and regression. He then goes on to further synthesize a plausible model of how these processes work in general, how memory and consciousness plays a role in them, and how these models are consistent with cognition in general. Modern research on dreams actually substantiates this fairly well thus far, taking the position that dreams are forms of memory consolidation and the consequence of "regression".
You really have to read some of this stuff and not just parrot what you have heard others say about Freud. The "Elektra Complex" is not even Freud's idea; it was an idea of Jung's that Freud was critical of.