Difference between revisions of "Talk:Sigmund Freud"

Latest revision as of 16:38, March 4, 2019

Not sure how important it is that he was an atheist, though it could be mentioned in relation to that debate he had with C.S. Lewis. Also, a citation about the euthanasia thing would be useful.

Prof R C Tallis

Can you explain how a Professor of Geriatric Medicine is an expert in psychology( or even science--as opposed to medicine or geriatrics)? If not I really think that reference is inappropriate and should be removed. --Reginod 13:39, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Now he is being used to support mere gossip. Weakening the claim does not make him a better source for its veracity, but it does make the claim entirely inappropriate for an encyclopedia entry. “Some have charged X with Y” is nothing but gossip and should be immediately removed as it violates the commandments. --Reginod 11:49, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Seeing no explanation, I will remove it as gossip.--Reginod 11:45, 30 April 2007 (EDT)

Popper

Actually now that I look at it I think the comment about Popper should also be removed, since the opinions of philosophers are not relevant to what is or is not science (as per this comment [1] ), but to be clear that I am acting in good faith I figured I’d put this on the talk page to avoid any appearance that I was engaging in an edit war or some other forbidden behavior.--Reginod 13:44, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

If Popper isn't a good source on what is or is not science I'm not sure who would be. Some of the end of this article is a bit of a stretch, at least the part about no experiments showing any merit of his work. There are many studies showing that psychoanalysis can be a useful treatment. But that has little to do with Freud's ideas about psychosexual stages or id/ego/superego. Murray 13:59, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

I tried cleaning it up a bit to reflect reality. Popper is defiantly a worthy source for the discussion of what is and is not science. Tmtoulouse 14:08, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

That's much better. Murray 14:22, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

I, personally, would tend to agree with both of you, Popper should be usable as a source for what is or is not science. But, I don’t make the rules here. See the comment I linked to above . Philosophers of science are not relevant sources when dealing with science. The views of philosophers are opinions when it comes to science (see here [2] ). --Reginod 15:35, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Eh we make the rules on pages that have yet to be discovered and put through the CP intellectual downgrade. Let Schlafly come and say Popper doesn't know anything first, I don't want to proactively dumb down articles myself :).Tmtoulouse 15:44, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

The Popper reference is useful because it helps explain that Freud's work was never scientific. Otherwise, people might think that it was scientific, but has merely been superceded by modern brain research. RSchlafly 15:50, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Why is Popper, a philosopher and not a scientist, an appropriate reference here? Or is it now the case that philosophers of science are relevant sources when it comes to science? --Reginod 15:57, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Freud was not a scientist either. Freud was a charlatan. Popper is cited for a point in the philosophy of science, and he was an expert on that. RSchlafly 17:57, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Last time I cited a philosopher of science for a point about just that I was told that it was not relevant, in fact I was told that it was not relevant by you. Why is philosophy of science relevant for the current (or past) state of science here, but not in the case of Newton? --Reginod 09:30, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Popper is usually accepted to have created one of the better definitions of science - although personally, I prefer Lakatos. But it's probably fair to say that Freudianism isn't science. However, I disagree with the implication that this makes Freud's work useless. Psychology is a social science, and most social sciences aren't scientific in the strictly Popperesque sense, but they're still useful. And strictly speaking, medicine often isn't exactly falsifiable, either. --AKjeldsen 11:55, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Bah, 99 percent of the work that I do in psychology is more closely aligned with Karl Popper and the scientific method then a great deal of the "hard" sciences like physics and chemistry :). Tmtoulouse 12:04, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

A lot of psychology is useful. I am not putting down psychology. But Freud's work was crap, and caused more harm than good. His theories aren't useful for anything. RSchlafly 14:01, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Freud’s work may or may not have value, but that doesn’t explain why Popper’s view is relevant here. If you have a source for the claim Freud’s work “caused more harm than good” or that “His theories aren't useful for anything”, I’d love to see them. But, your dislike for the man or his theory’s does not justify your use of this source.--Reginod 14:24, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Newton was a real scientist, Freud was not. Popper was a respected philosopher of science who lived at the same time as Freud. Popper's view tells what knowledgeable people thought of Freud while he was alive. I don't get your analogy to Newton. RSchlafly 15:21, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Your evidence for Freud was not a scientist is a philosopher of science. You are appealing to the authority of a philosopher of science. You have in the past said philosophers of science are irrelevant as an authority when dealing with science (that Freud is not a scientist is a claim about science). Unless Popper is relevant because what philosophers of science have to say about science is relevant, he is not relevant here (what smart people think about science is even less relevant than what philosophers of science think about science). Is what philosophers of science have to say about science relevant?--Reginod 15:28, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

I don't know what you are arguing about. The article says, "Freud's theories are viewed as unscientific because they lack falsifiability". That is a correct statement, and it belongs in the article. Popper is a good source to support that statement. If you dispute the statement, then tell us why and provide us with sources. RSchlafly 15:39, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

I’m not arguing, I’m asking a question, one which I have yet to see an answer to. I’ve tried asking it in context, to explain why I’m asking, but it seems to get lost when I try to do it that way, so let me drop the context and ask the question straight out: Are philosophers of science appropriate sources to use as support for claims about science?--Reginod 15:46, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

If you want an expert opinion on quantum chromodynamics, I wouldn't pay much attention to the philosophers. If the question is some scientific claim related to Freudian theory, such as whether the symbolic interpretation of dreams can predict behavior, then that is not really a question that philosophy answers. But Popper is being used her for a question of philosophy, not the merits of any scientific ideas. RSchlafly 16:14, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Popper is being used here to pass judgment on whether or not something (actually a number of somethings) is sciencntific. Not a question of philosophy. A question of philosophy would be “is falsifiability a necessary feature of a scientific theory? or “What is falsifiability?” (neither of which are settled questions). You could write, “Popper said falsifiability is a necessary feature of science, and under his definition Freud’s theories were not falsifiable” – but that would be about Popper not Freud. To say X is unscientific as evidenced by Popper’s claims is to say that Popper is a good source for what is science, not what some philosophers believe science to be. He is being used here to make a claim about science not about philosophy. --Reginod 16:37, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

I think that whether or not something is scientific is a philosophical question, so I guess we disagree on that. But whether it is or not, the cite to Popper is proper. You've strayed from the topic. RSchlafly 16:49, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Thank you for taking the time to try to explain your position to me. --Reginod 17:09, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Unconscious Before Freud

Reginod, why did you remove this?

See also: Whyte, Lancelot Law: The Unconscious Before Freud (Palgrave Macmillan, 1979)

It is a respectable book, and seems like a good source to me. RSchlafly 16:28, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

i think he thought the citation was the book review on amazon.com which it links to, not the book. I was going to add it back.Bohdan

That’s exactly why I removed it, a link to an amazon.com page about a book is not a good way to support a claim—a cite to the book (along with a page number) would be fine, or a link to a page which actually has the claim on it. But, as it stood the link did not support the claim.--Reginod 17:20, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

I removed the claims that some of Freud's new ideas have been shown to be correct. If it were really true, then some book or paper could be cited where the ideas were shown to be correct. The available references say the opposite. RSchlafly 20:47, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

I’m not sure why this was addressed to me (or if it was, but it seems to have been), but I think that’s great—I’m all for removing unsourced claims and I think a healthy dose of that would do many articles here a great deal of good. Actually I’m fairly happy with how the article looks now. --Reginod 23:48, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Religions and Freud

Freud has imaginative theories about religions and there they are comming from (Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics). Should these be critisized here? --Aulis Eskola 10:38, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Regarding some Errors

There seem to be some errors on this page.

Although I detest Freud's anti-religious views (and cocaine use), to say his work is considered pseudoscience is pretty outlandish. In Science there is a difference between Quantitative and Qualitative evidence. Now because of the nature of psychology, much of his work falls under the the realm of qualitative evidence, which uses characteristics instead of numbers to prove something.

The "falsifiability" lies with the results of his patients which is, quite frankly, world renowned as his work has lead to the help of many including those who were clinically ill. If his work didn't help the patients out and had left them brainwashed/traumatized etc. it would of been rejected. The massive spread of psychoanalysis is due to its effectiveness and it has gone through many scientific studies/advances etc.

Also I'm not certain the source claiming he falsified his theories is reliable because up to that point almost no one had such theories besides him :/

But hey as someone who studied Psychology and had to write a large essay on Freud I thought I could just point some things out. :)

--ConservaCollege 16:04, 27 February 2009 (EST)

So where is the evidence that Freud ever helped anyone? The massive spread of psychoanalysis is for reasons other than its effectiveness. And it is not spreading anymore, as most people agree that it does not work. RSchlafly 04:26, 28 February 2009 (EST)

Misleading statements

I think that this sentence of the article is misleading: "However other critics of Freud, such as Hans Eysenck and Adolf Grunbaum, while viewing his theories as wrong, have conceded that they may indeed be falsifiable." As far as I know from reading his books, Grunbaum does not see all of Freud's theories as necessarily being "wrong". He does believe that there is strong evidence against some of Freud's theories (for example, his dream theory), but that some of Freud's other theories may possibly be correct. He gives Freud's ideas about the development of homosexuality as one example of this (he argues this in Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis; I can quote that book and provide page references, if it helps). Furthermore, I do not believe that it is Grunbaum's view that all of Freud's theories are necessarily falsifiable: some of them are, some might not be. As I am new to Conservapedia, I am not going to try to change or remove that sentence right away, but I think it is important to note that it is misleading. Comments? DFWilson 17:36, 23 February 2012 (EST)

Books by Freud on religion

This article is misleading when it talks about Freud's works on religion. First of all, it says that Freud published just two works on religion - Moses and Monotheism and The Future of an Illusion - but it does not refer to another book Freud wrote on relgion, "Totem and Taboo". Secondly, it refers to "Moses and Monotheism" and "The Future of an Illusion" and then says that these works, "particularly the second", are hostile to religion. Moses and Monotheism was published after The Future of an Illusion. It was published towards the end of Freud's life, in 1939. Carltonio (talk) 11:38, 4 March 2019 (EST)