Said Sophie Freud, quoted in "Sophie Freud, professor who challenged her grandfather’s doctrine, dies at 97/The last surviving grandchild of Sigmund Freud described her grandfather as one of the 'false prophets of the 20th century'" (WaPo).
She dismissed “penis envy,” a developmental stage that Sigmund Freud attributed to young girls, as “nonsense” and the ideas of a “3-year-old boy.” Of her grandfather’s theory of the parent-child dynamic, she dryly remarked, “I have some questions about this Oedipal relationship.”
She found particularly flawed her grandfather’s understanding of female patients. “My grandfather was a good and loving man,” Dr. Freud told the Associated Press, “but he understood nothing about a woman’s sexuality.”
Dr. Freud saw value in her grandfather’s notions of unconscious motives and defense mechanisms, as well as in some of his ideas about the role played in the human psyche by unexplored childhood experience. But there was a limit, she argued, in ceaselessly revisiting that experience, as psychoanalysts traditionally challenged patients on their couches to do.
“My message is you have the chance to change the way you think about life without having to go back and redo it all,” she once told a gathering of social workers. “There are so many paths to a person. All you have to do is unpack another self who has been waiting to be unpacked anyway. And then go with that self instead of the messed-up self that you’ve been attached to.”
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26 comments:
She has daddy issues.
"the 'false prophets of the 20th century'"
Have their been any true prophets of the 20th century?
I nominate Hayek and Solzhenitsyn.
Freudian psychoanalysis has been out of style for decades and I was always suspicious after one shrink dated my parent.
But just as I came around to wanting someone to talk to, I heard all they did was prescribe drugs and do followup med checks.
They must get tired of listening to people's shit all day anyway.
At the risk of piling on, I'll pile on. Freudism has been known to be quackery since almost its beginnings. Freudism and Marxism are the two giant cons that defined the modern age, and explain a lot of the stupid things that happened in the 20th C.
That either man, or their notions, are treated as reality-based just proves the failure of modern education.
She dismissed “penis envy,” a developmental stage that Sigmund Freud attributed to young girls
Of course there is NOW; an Entire Industry, based upon the idea that little girls wish they were boys
oh well! The More Things Change, The More doctors get paid!! And THAT, is Always the point, right?
The more you learn about the teachings of Sigmund Freud the more you'll think he was a nutcase. Yep. Yep. Yep. Many jaws have dropped upon learning what he really said.
Pop psych godfather. Cult-like. Faddish. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Good for Sophie. Debunking him is a good legacy.
One of the many awful legacies of the First World War was the boost it gave to Freud and his ideas. How to explain the seeming stupidity of it all? Well, you see, people are a mixed up concatenation of drives and traumas, prone to the irrational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnvXnXTDTHE
She probably didn't believe in astrology, either.
Viennese Voodoo.
It's amusing to read Mary McCarthy dunk on her old classmates in her novels for their pseudo intellectual Freudianism.
She was a lapsed Catholic herself and knew a fake religion when she saw it.
Blogger Narr said...
At the risk of piling on, I'll pile on. Freudism has been known to be quackery since almost its beginnings. Freudism and Marxism are the two giant cons that defined the modern age, and explain a lot of the stupid things that happened in the 20th C.
Exactly. In 1962 I spent a summer working in a VA psych hospital. It was run by a professor at UCLA who told me that psychoanalysis was bullshit. His father had been an analyst and he knew Freud. He thought the cause of psychosis was organic.
In his time, Freud was hailed as a scientist.
"He thought the cause of psychosis was organic."
That hasn't exactly worked out either.
Tbf Freud dealt more with neurosis.
Inferential logic. Science is processed through correlations and deduction, cannot discern between origin and expression.
Ingrate.
It's her only clickable move given the genetic cards she was dealed.
Have their been any true prophets of the 20th century?
A prophet in the 21st Century predicted that gas would be $5+ a gallon if Biden were to become president somehow.
That turned out to be true.
The last surviving grandchild of Sigmund Freud described her grandfather as one of the 'false prophets of the 20th century'"
Somehow I don't think she would've made the paper if she had said ol' Sigmund was "the greatest grandpop EVAR...!!"
But what did she really *mean*?
Seriously, though, the value of Freud was the basic recognition of mental illness as something treatable, whether through drugs or talk therapy, and not an intractable spiritual or moral defect. The problem with him was that his ideas for treatment tended to be disastrously bad, and he lacked the humility to recognize that he was flying blind.
Throwing shade on Freud? Oh the Schadenfreude!
“ She has daddy issues.”
Grand.
Well, he came out of a milieu that produced Hitler or, alternatively, celebrated Lenin. He was definitely a false prophet, but, as false prophets go, he wasn't the most pernicious. Some of his theories were plausible and none caused widespread famines or massacres. ....I read the Webster biography. He was a shoddy scientist. There was a wide variance between what he documented in his case notes and now he he wrote about such patients in his books. There was no case on record of any of his patients ever being cured by the "talking cure" despite what he claimed in his books.....For the record, let it be noted that Aimee Semple McPherson, who was on of Freud's contemporaries, cured far more patients than Freud. Who was the charlatan?
"Grand"
Women need defending.
Actual psychologists haven’t taken Freud seriously in nearly a century. Modern psychology textbooks don’t even mention him, except maybe in a historical footnote.
I used to date an English professor, and was amused to discover that English departments are now dominated by feminist literary criticism, which is based almost entirely on Freudian psychoanalysis. She was not amused by my amusement.
Oh, both Dr Marx and Prof Dr Freud were 19th C humanists and, in their personal lives and relations, not very monstrous*. The trouble is that in an age of Scientism they were able to convince and persuade many others that their doctrines were scientific and had the potential to better human life.
That various followers and semi-followers later misinterpreted, mangled, and/or weaponized their ideas isn't really their fault, and I don't blame them any more than I blame Jesus (or Darwin for that matter) for what some of their self-proclaimed followers have got up to.
*Marx was lazy, and a poor stock-market speculator who wheedled funds from his widowed mother until she died.
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