The professional psychological world has a vicious love-hate relationship with Sigmund Freud—one minute we revere him as the seminal father of modern psychology and the next minute we discredit him as a perverted crack user who wanted to sleep with his mom. Perhaps psychologists are nothing more than rowdy fair-weather fans who lend credence to what is acceptable in the here and now (like New York Yankee fans). However, that line of logic can only be described as Freudian. The truth is that people are not smitten with the fact that an indelible mark has been made on psychology that brings along with it all manners of stereotypes: leather sofas, talk therapy, German accents, etc. Despite the fact that critics are prone to debunk Freud’s sexual based theories (wouldn’t that make critics themselves the perverts?), contemporary psychology and psychoanalytic methods are rooted in Freud’s approach that Summers (2006) defines as hermeneuticistic.
Although seemingly revolutionary at the time, such an approach seems almost base in today’s perception of understanding psychosis. Psychoanalytic psychology as a logical, procedural, correlation leads directly to causation model is flawed. First, correlation does not necessarily mean causation which is a basic principle of psychology that has evolved into a war cry from aspiring freshman psychology majors. Secondly, psychoanalysis is very, very subjective. It is surprising to note that Freud was unsure himself about his own influence during his attempts to foster open-ended personal journeys of self discovery with clients (Summers, 2006).
Freud felt pressured by criticisms of psychology as a legitimate science as evident by his adherence to reductionistic methodology (Summers, 2006). However, discrediting such an approach to explain other phenomena is erroneous. When it comes to psychoanalysis, especially dream analyzing, reductionism falls shorts in explaining the significance of manifest content and latent content. The key behind the fallacy is again found in the subjective nature of dreams. With Freud in the role of Interpreter, dreams become augmented within his own perspective of infantile wish fulfillment (Summers, 2006). This framework increases the likelihood for themes and messages to be open for a variety of interpretations—essentially a dream about becoming king of Canada could be related to one’s inner support for the Canadian universal health care system, which could point to a hatred of the health care system in the United States, which points to anger or hate toward something; possibly the abuse of health care by citizens of the United States and illegal immigrants alike, which in the end is not really about health care reform but about the family dog that died and one’s deeper fear of becoming intimate with anyone else.
Although this scenario is easily exaggerated, it clearly demonstrates subjectivity in interpretation. However, there is relevance as Summers (2006) quips:
"If interpretation has not been found to achieve analytic goals as frequently as we desire, one wonders why interpretation continues to be part of analytic technique. The answer is simply this: It is the only way we have to access deeper layers of meaning" (p. 336).
Succinctly, Freud is still an unavoidable foundation as forerunner for a system to uncover and identify the origins of mental disorders as a means to formulate treatment. Consider that what is accepted to be the final and defining word as psychology is also highly subjective to time. Criticism of Freud therefore is based on outdated theories and information. In that same vein, we might soon find ourselves dismissing Philip G. Zimbardo (Freud the father of modern psychology, Zimbardo the spoiled nephew who has it coming) textbooks as the standard for mainstream education in psychology.
Works Cited
Summers, Frank. (2006). Freud’s relevance for contemporary psychoanalytic technique. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 23(2), 327-338.
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