Freud

These days, I struggle to find anything resembling an idea. I still have the urge to 'create,' but I can't define it or find a focus for it. Maybe this is significant, I don't know.

If it were possible to craft a cigar in the image of the venusian furrow, I would most assuredly disappear in great clouds of smoke.

Oooh hell yes. All the time. And I remember a very uncopmfortable six months many years ago when I was going 'oh my God, Siggy was right all along'. I still think he's right - but things go a lot further than that. The unleashing of repressed urges is just the beginning. Freud acknoledged this on several occasions in his writing - he was a frusttrated mystic. I think if you like Freud and American scientific psychology, and have had the odd mystical experience yourself, you can't go past Michael Washburn's 'The Ego and the Dynamic Ground'. I just cannot recommend this book enough for people who are experiencing strange and unwelcome thoughts and sensations.

It's been mentioned that Freud was a great writer. I agree. You can read him like a novelist.

See, now, I tend to think repression was the worst idea Freud came up with - the idea that all psychological problems are the result of repressed trauma has been manifestly destructive. False Memory Syndrome derives directly from the idea that whatever is causing the problem is a traumatic memory the patient can't consciously recall - so you keep persuading them to "recall" one. Some of the worst Satanic ritual abuse hysterias, alien abduction delusions &c can be traced to particular psychoanalysts.

And, of course, the memory has to be repressed. I've heard war veterans talk about psychologists who insisted their problems had to be the result of child abuse they couldn't remember, rather than all that fighting and killing they can remember.

And I think you're right about dreaming = defragging.

"You can read him like a novelist."

Sure, just don't put him in the non-fiction section.

Hmmm, I guess I'm leaning to the "wanker completely wasted on cocaine" side.

Repression isn't really Freud's idea, and has been around for a long time. In neuroscience there's the concept of neural inhibition, which is well and truly on the same track.

The computer metaphor is an interesting one for cognition, but it is, after all, a metaphor, not an attempt at causal explanation. For causal explanation you need to talk about the brain, the body and the physical environment.

My problem with Freud's theory is that, especially in the later phases, it became too representational (like modern cognitive psychology). Everything happened in the 'mind', but 'mind' as a place where things happen is a very nebulous concept - the true phantom of our age.

Freud's contribution will probably become more obvious once we understand the causation involved in selective inhibition of the higher cortex by the brainstem and hypothalamus. Then we can really make sense of things like primal drives, conflict and so on.

Perhaps Freud argued this, but I'm not, nor is anyone else nowadays. Well, at least not anyone who's taken seriously. That does not mean repression is not a useful concept on some levely, ie we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Psychoanalysis, like the man who developed it, gets more things wrong than right. It's a very narrow way of viewing things and proponents of it tend to cling religiously to it, ignoring anything that is outside of its reach. Many times these things don't even contradict or refute Psychoanalysis per se, they're just a different way to view things, different tools to use to help understand people and their brains.

(xpost---Don't even get me started on Skinner!)

Oh, I didn't think you were. But I've seen some horror stories about the absolute insistence by some practitioners that a) the source of the problem is repressed memories of trauma and b) (more dangerously) that memories "recovered" under hypnosis can be relied upon.

(And don't get me started about Pigeonboy, either.)

Even if what you say is true (and of course it is) that has no bearing on the question of whether people develop symptoms through the repression or supression of disturbing thoughts. The two matters are logically distinct. Similarly, the fact that people misuse chemicals does not mean that a chemistry itself is in error. The issue of whether someone is suppressing something or no is very difficult to answer factually without some evidence, some physical evidence. The law should be all about real, tangible evidence.

However, the therapist (Freudian or otherwise, this goes for all theraies in existence today in psychology and psychiatry) isn't so concerned about whether the thing happened or not, but whether the client can be helped to manage their own response to their thoughts without freaking out. The therapist doesn't really care who's to blame, who should be locked up, etc, like a lawyer does.

On the one hand, this notion is abused (as are many notions) in the law courts, where complete psychic determinism (Freud) bumps up against the ascription of fault and the assumption of free will. The legal system is currently not compatible with Freud, or indeed with any determinist theory of perception.

I agree with you Oops about the fact that Freud allows us to see things in a new way, a new way which has flaws and limitations as well as insights. All views are like this, even 'respectable' theories like Euclidian geometry. I think Freud would agree too- as he seemed to delight in changing his theory through the years just to have a fresh metaphor. That's the writerly side of him, always turning over the problem, even at the risk of destroying or substantially modifying his own theory.

Oooh, people really hate poor BF Skinner don't they? But it's hard to pick a learning principle or operant conditioning technique that isn't taken for granted in the modern treatment of phobias and the training of animals.

I remember one of the last books to which he contributed was just a whole bunch of people having a go at him from psychology depts across the globe. Poor guy, from all reports he was funny, literate and rather sweet - and the first person in the history of psychology to recommend that children be brought up without any punishment at all, only positive reinforcement - and so much of this is now common practise in behaviour therapy. Poor old Bhurrus - a great writer, though not a great novelist (don't go near Walden 2).

Freud discovered very early on that, despite his initial observations that hysterics had suffered "literal" paternal sexual abuse, this was not actually the case. Also, despite his latter day adherents' ignoring of things like post-traumatic stress disorder due to their repressed childhood trauma reductionism, Freud's dream interpretation was largely based on the analysand's more recent events (like the previous day's). For Freud, the Unconscious certainly receives input and works through stimuli post-childhood.

Law courts? While some of the results of False Memory Syndrome have an impact through the courts, where patients encouraged to recall abuse that did not happen were also encouraged to believe it did, quite enough damage could be done without the intercession fo the legal system. And sady, many therapists do seem to care who is to blame. To be fair to Freud, much of these problems seem to derive from this stubborn (and bizarre) insistence by some practitioners that people under hypnosis can't lie, so that their recollections can be relied upon. I know that not all practitioners believe this. (I also often wonder if the distate "professional" hypnotists have for hypnotist entertainers is at least partially driven by the realistaion that the fantasies concocted by people hypnotised for stage shows undermines the notion that recalled memories are not reliable.)

I guess I'd be less concerned by the frequent misapplication (as you see it) of Freud's repression concept by his followers if the original idea had merit, which, it seems to me, it doesn't.

Now I suppose I'm going to have to read the man himself. *sigh*

i'm looking for a good essay about freud and the eros/thanatos thing....anyone? would appreciate it!

I don't know about a particular essay, but Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization" is probably the classic attempt to set Freud's eros/thanatos struggle to work in social theory.

I haven't read it yet, so can't vouch for it firsthand, but you might also look at the chapter "The Death of Freud" in Adam Phillips's "Darwin's Worms."

oh yeah, Marcuse...and i have a PB of that somewhere! and I'll hunt around for the Phillips chapter. Thanks, Adam

I mean, onewaystreet!

lol freud