Freud

5 Commentsby   |  05.02.11  |  The Schools of Psychology (Part IV)

Sigmund Freud was a very interesting man with some very interesting ideas. In my opinion, however, Freud makes some very questionable leaps in his theories. While I do agree that there are many processes that take place subconsciously, I tend to disagree with Freud that obscure symbols in dreams always have some sort of hidden meaning. I also disagree with the jumps that he makes in his interpretations. For example, Freud once interpreted a boy’s fear of horses to be a fear of his father because the horse wore blinders and had prominent parts and the father wore glasses and was fully grown. Things like that kind of reminded me of the clip from Monty Python that we watched at the beginning of the year about a woman accused of being a witch. To determine whether or not she was, they made giant leaps in logic that are really very comical. The other criticism that I have with Freud’s psychoanalysis is that you can’t tell if it actually does any good. As Dr. McAnulty said during class, “Psychoanalysis is like mental masturbation. It’s interesting and it feels good, but it doesn’t get anything done.” I feel like with Freud’s interpretations, he could just make anything mean whatever he wanted, and that what he did, for the most part, probably didn’t help that many people.

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5 Comments

  1. Brady Campbell
    10:58 pm, 05.02.11

    I think that dream symbolism exists, and that it is so complicated that our understanding is miniscule. This last sentence implies my thoughts on Freud.

  2. Derek Mar
    11:08 pm, 05.02.11

    I agree completely with you about Freud. It seems that that would take one of his ideas and then twist the evidence around until it fit. I think that symbolism in dreams happens often, but I don’t agree with universal dream symbols. I think that the only person who can truly decipher ones dreams is the dreamer.

  3. Lindsey Fleming
    11:12 pm, 05.02.11

    I appreciate what you are saying about Freud and his fairly obscure connections between dreams/thoughts and meanings. I think he great intentions in that most of the things we think and dream about do have relation to something deeper, or something going on in our lives that is just not being addressed sufficiently by our conscious mind.
    I don’t think that his wild theories are much different than our own thoughts sometimes though. We often manipulate what we see and hear to mean what we want it to, interpret things to our benefit. We truly allow ourselves to be about self-gratification in our society, so it is only natural that we would want to “mentally masturbate” and stimulate our minds.
    I do not by any means think that Freud’s techniques were really effective, but I do think there is something to be said for looking more deeply within our minds.

  4. John Day IV
    11:23 pm, 05.02.11

    Although I cannot agree with Freud but I got to thank him. His theories caught people so off guard and sounded reasonable enough that it sparked enough of a conflict to draw attention to psychology. With this attention came scientist wanting to correct Freud in turn giving us new concepts and theories for a better psychological perspective of human behavior.

  5. McKenzie Goad
    11:36 pm, 05.02.11

    I think that although many of freud’s ideas seem so obscure, there is still merit in some of his ideas. You mentioned dreams, and although I don’t think that dreams are linked to unconscious sexual thoughts and all of the really weird stuff, I think dreams do sometimes give us an insight into our lives. Sometimes I wonder if God encourages us or speaks to us through our dreams. I’ve never had that experience, so I don’t really know, but it’s just a thought.

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