Is Freud worth reading if you treat his work more like philosophy

>>7379179

>I don't mind unverifiable bullshit so long as it doesn't pretend to be science.

Then don't read Freud.

He's worth reading because he wrote thousands of pages of literary theory.

>>7379179
Unverifiable? What are you talking about?

Which theories haven't been verified?

>>7379191

Meh, he's only valuable in this respect in character analysis and making speculations about the author.

>>7379214
dude, even his analysis of catharsis in eta hoffmann is worth reading him for alone. i really doubt you've read him because most of what he deals with isn't character analysis or making speculations about the author.

>>7379179
Freud was the first to widely publicize the idea that even when writing, your unconscious motivation speaks louder than your conscious intention. you can imagine how this might shake up Anglo Saxon philosophers and logical positivists, two of the loudest groups of Freud disregarders. Freud is not only useful— he is necessary for navigating the ideological spiderweb of the 21st century.

Good: The Uncanny, Civilization and Its Discontents, Moses and Monotheism. Shamanistic bullshit: The Interpretation of Dreams. Can't comment on the rest.

>>7379243
But is it fun shamanistic bullshit?

>>7379246
definitely. one of the first blockbusters of the 20th C

>>7379179
it's just Nietzsche with pretend clinical import

>>7379659
Nietzsche would have been against him for the same reasons he was against Schopenhauer (and Christianity). Not all will/drive based systems agree with Nietzsche.

>>7379666
probably, I'm just saying that a lot of ideas and argumentative structures in Freud are pretty obviously preceded by Nietzsche, and things like the death drive are straight up corruptions of Nietzschean ideas.

>>7379682
You know most of Nietzsche's stuff is corruptions of Schopenhauer's will, so the death drive you're talking about would be closer to Schopenhauer's description of it as would his prescribed treatment of it.

>>7379194
Pretty much his entire work got thrown at as quackery decades ago.

>>7379707
>at
out

>>7379707
>DSM IV apologist

>>7379707
The problem was that it was unfalsifiable, not unverifiable. The plethora and heterogeneity of available verifications is what makes it so suspect as a scientific theory.

>>7379194
lol his relative was edward bernays the father of modern propaganda and the media in general.

It is both of their fault we have an over-sexualized pathetic excuse for a society

>>7379718
>it
What exactly?

>unverifiable
>science
>it isn't realz sciencez!

I want reddit to leave.

If you are one of those people, you shouldn't read Freud or any relevant or worthwhile author for that matter.

>>7379859
not the guy you're talking to but everything he did is from his personal point of view that he ascribes to everyone else.

he was a fucking weirdo who managed to convince a lot of people that they were also disgusting cretins

>>7379866
Butthurt continental detected

>>7379867
That is far from 'exactly' anything.

>>7379851
8.5/10 gj family

>>7379859
Freudian psychoanalysis

>>7379866
Freud was a hack don't be so mad

His influence alone makes him worth reading.

>>7379179
>Is Freud worth reading if you treat his work more like philosophy than psychology?

yes, the man was basically a literary critic but didn't realize it and that's how pretty much everyone uses him.

>>7379859
"Hey I dreamed about a bumble bee sitting on my hand. What does it all mean mang?"

"It means you want to fuck your mother and kill your father!"

Everybody becomes Oedipus and every dream and every problem can be twisted around to fit into this framework. This is unfalsifiable. Therefore, it is unscientific.

Of course, Freud more or less pioneered the idea of a subconsciousness so he's still useful for that alone.

>>7379246
It's hilarious

>>7379179
>>7379179

ITT: People who have read Freud and understand his work's value, and people who haven't read Freud but are reeeeeeeeeal sure he's full of shit, because their teacher told them.

In my opinion one of the primary reasons why Freud is rejected is because his methodology and projects are not the same as contemporary science. Modern science places preeminent value on predictability and replicability. (If you don't prove your hypthesis (prediction) it isn't science. If someone else can't do the same thing you did, it isn't science.)

Since science is commonly taken as the authority on the real, this predisposition orients people towards an exagerated concern with the future, additionally it errodes the possibility of unique human experience. (Since a unique experience would presumably be inexpressible to people who have not had that experience. If people did have the experience, then it would not be unique.)

Additionally, modern psychological research is funded, which means that it needs to produce money as a result, which means that it is oriented towards knowledge which helps produce money. That knowledge is primarily the knowledge of how to sell people things and how to make people compentant workers-- which is why suicide is bad, why commercials for anti-depressants are on prime time, and why something like two thirds of Americans between 15-25 have an Adderal prescription. Drugs sell, and they're easier to mass produce than meaningful therapy.


Now, none of that functions to accredit Freud with anything, but I think it is important to understand the generally unstated forces in the world which naturally work to discredit him.

>>7380451
Freud's techniques are not easily replicatable (if at all), because so much of his work function as literary criticism. Meaning that a patient would describe an action or thought, and Freud would have to find what that action or thought was symbolically representing. Yet this symbolic representation, if it was going to be expressed, demanded it's own form of symbolic representation. (Thus, a particular action might be attributed to an Oedipal Complex, but the Oedipal complex is a placeholder for a desire to kill your father and marry your mother. But that sentence "desire to kill your father and marry your mother" is a place holder for a "deeper", more difficult to express sentiment. Perhaps a desire to return to total unity and to destroy your likeness, in order to destroy your self, which is seperation from that unity. But again, THIS sentence could be broken down as well.

(If you aren't familiar with Saussure's linguistics I recomend you look into it quickly. It's basically that we can never express the thing in itself (the signified) because all of our expressions are caught up in mediums (the signifier), and anytime we think we have expressed the signified, we have simply produced another signifier, and the signified as shifted out of sight again.

This is more or less the Freudian (as explicate by Lacan) structure of desire.


Now, because this structure has to do with concepts of the language we use to describe it, it has an infinitely regressive quality to it. This is simultaneously why it is a profound insight to have AND why pharmaceutical, behaviorist, band aid psychology to keep the proles producing is horribly disinterested in it. You can't sell a lot of Freud's theories in a medicine way.

You CAN, however, use his theories to sell pretty much anything, which his nephew Edward Bernays did.

A quick listof Bernays' accomplishments

-Linked diamonds to undending love, starting the diamond engagement ring standard

-linked cigarettes to the possession of a phallus, getting women to smoke for the first time

-popularized the notion of "herd psychology" for discussing the mass

-started the notion of "public relations"

-helped plan the Chicago World Fair, making sure that the ideas of Capitalism and Democracy became inextricable

-Changed the name of "Department of War" to "Department of Defense"

-Began the first ad campaign that linked automobiles to male sexuality

And there's so many more. You can watch a documantary about it called The Century of Self. I highly reccomend it.
TL;DR Freud was certainly a genius. What he did was really hard to do, and people can't do it in a profitable way within healthcare, so he's poo-pooed. Every single modern marketing campaign is Freudian though. He's worth a read.

>>7380451
>>7380460
Thank you anon(s) for these detailed, thought-out posts.
I'll check him out.

>>7380451
>In my opinion one of the primary reasons why Freud is rejected is because his methodology and projects are not the same as contemporary science.

you obviously didn't read the thread then

>>7379718

>>7379179
If you want to understand why Freud was a hack read Conjectures and Refutations, it is very short.

>>7380451
>>7380460
Great posts.

>>7379179
I'd recommend skipping freud and going to jung. It's just much better all around, and if you disagree, you have to admit at least jung knows how he sounds.

>>7379215
I meant Freud's use for literary theory is with regards to character analysis or making speculations about the author. Not his own literary theory, of which I'm not aware. I have read Freud: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id, On Narcissism, and Moses and Monotheism.

>>7380296

How is the theory of Continental Drift falsifiable?

Or Evolution?

>>7380451
>Drugs sell, and they're easier to mass produce than meaningful therapy.

How do you know that any kind of therapy is effective without empirical research? How do you then improve upon it in measurable terms? You imply that modern therapy will be half-assed, designed to put workers back in their cubicles asap rather than to solve their problems. But how do you know Freud did a better job of it?

>>7380648
There have been some studies showing that family support can be as beneficial or more beneficial than medication.

>>7380648
I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know all the specifics of the issues around testing psychoanalysis. But one thing I've heard is there isn't much pressure or interest in testing it because it takes so long, so it's much cheaper to test therapies that take take less time.

So one answer is that it's hard to tell if it's better than other therapies because there's not much (monetary) pressure to find out.

>>7380631
When you want to lob the theory of evolution out the window you first need to come up with a better theory, a system that more elegantly explains the body of evidence collected. You can then try to falsify your new system. Good luck.

No, I'm not a scientist and I'm not some scholar who has read 10k words of Popper and Witty. I do, however, believe there's a good reason why our teachers bring up Freud as the punching bag for modern science and that it's not just because of fordism taking over the world.

>>7380676
So, empirical research fails because we're too lazy to even carry it out when it becomes too time-consuming?

Well this sure sucks.

>>7380607
>I meant Freud's use for literary theory is with regards to character analysis or making speculations about the author. Not his own literary theory, of which I'm not aware.

what? Most of what people read for literary theory is Interpretation of Dreams (or even just the Hamlet section when reading Hamlet), or Delusion and Dream (Derrida heavy courses). Using the titles you mention for literary theory is some Germaine Greer type shit. Don't read things that way.

The only other shit dedicated to character analysis (er, obviously not in the Reichian sense) I can think of is Bettelheim and his Uses of Enchantment. If your problem is making speculations about the author, I think considering the main people it makes speculations about the fantasies of are Sigmund and Anna Freud, and they're pretty well based in historical fact.

On The Uncanny is about ETA Hoffmann which which also pretty influential. This one somewhat differs from the others because it's not a demonstration of how the Oedipal complex is present in everyone in the plot as adults, but focuses more on the effects on the audience.

He has a paper about forgetfulness, which I cannot recall now, but it's the basis for his Freudian slip ideas. It's a really interesting work on language, and fits in nicely with how he created his case names and what Bettelheim reads into his work.

>>7380460
Regarding Freudian psychology and capitalism, I recommend anyone interested in a more modern view check out Spent by Geoffry Miller. Really enjoyable, 'post-consumerist' breakdown of advertising / selling stuff.

Also
>But that sentence "desire to kill your father and marry your mother" is a place holder for a "deeper", more difficult to express sentiment. Perhaps a desire to return to total unity and to destroy your likeness, in order to destroy your self, which is seperation from that unity. But again, THIS sentence could be broken down as well.

Ernest Becker has some interesting theories regarding this in The Denial of Death. Proposes that the Oedipus complex is more of the child trying to become both the father (protector) and the child (protected), keeping both the innocence, while maintaining the independence.