>>12545954You make a good point. As you say, Freud did see psychoanalysis as a medical science. Taken at face value, I agree that his predictions don't pan out experimentally; you give good examples with neuroticism and the role of repressed and resistance. And psychoanalysis as a method of treatment has problems, especially w/r/t the role of the analyst, again, as you say. I'll be honest: I'm not a psychologist and I don't know very much about the field as it stands today. I trust there are good, empirical reasons why we don't apply Freud's psychotherapy as it was created.
But with that said, I don't think that his ideas are spoiled by their lack of efficacy. For example, repression and resistance may not have aged well in the context of psychiatric medicine, but they have aged exceptionally well on the level of human experience: post-modern writing feels inundated with the concepts. Freud's writing was once purely scientific, but today I think it's value is in its "literary" interpretation. I think a lot of people miss this, and are therefore put off when they read (or more often hear) about things like penis envy or the stages of development, which they regard as 20th century misogyny and perversion pretending to be science. At least for me these have value outside their scientific implication: the idea of childhood being a deeply, unconsciously sexual experience is fascinating and original; I think it is to most people if they're willing to really think about it. So for almost all of Freud's ideas.
I understand this is subjective, but it's good policy not to dismiss the subjectively beautiful in the same breath as the scientifically unverifiable. Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods is a well-respected classic despite the fact that no one believes in the gods he believed in anymore. I don't know. I'm just saddened by the categorical dismissal of an author who's work I regard as transcendent.
And of course I agree, neuropsychoanalysis is unbelievably stupid.
