I posted this article last quarter in our Cognition class, but I realize not everybody was in that class. Regardless, I found this article particularly appropriate given our current focus on Freud. Basically, the author attempts to dispel some of the myths about Freud (i.e. he was unscientific, crazy, etc). Here are some of the main points of the article:
1. Freud was a neurologist and studied nerve cells
2. Freud did not "invent" the idea of the unconscious...the unconscious (or similar versions) had already been proposed by other notables, including Wilhelm Wundt, Fustav Fechner, Leibniz, etc). Thus, Freud was very much a product of his time.
3. Neuroscientists today would not deny the existence of the unconscious and implicit memory
4. One of Freud's goals was to "ground the psychological in the biological" or to have biological evidence for his theories
5. Freud believed memories were not fixed, but reconstructed (this is something that memory researchers such as Loftus have "discovered" in their research)
6. Freud proposed that memory is represented in the brain at a cellular, synaptic level (this was a precursor to long-term potentiation)
So here is my question. Why does the idea that Freud had a biological component to his theory make it more viable? I mean this from the perspective of why aren't Freud's case studies enough to convince us about Freud. At least case studies combined with what we actually see in life. Frued was actually a pioneer in the case study and many of his case studies were among the best that were ever done. Why also can't we accept that Freud was simply right about many things. We have this tendency in modern psychology to fetishize both statistical analysis and brain science. I think Freud would suggest that we tend to fetishisize statistics. That the reason statistics are so popular is because they tend to sanitize the work and analysis we do of human behavior. When we sit in front of a computer and do statistical analysis we are in essence performing a sexual act. Think about it really (and I woner if women and men engage in this act differently and what it means). Yet we have so separated the act from passion that we do not have to think about or deal with the sexual component. It is a very safe expression of our sexual energy.
ReplyDeleteSo what does it mean if I do not enjoy running statistics? ;)
ReplyDeleteIt is weird that the link of Freud's idea to some biological basis is a plea to legitimize it - and strange that we cannot take his ideas as of value at their face in some ways. (Even if I'm still skeptical). This obsession with "hard science" is then also our suppressed sexual energy?
With the aspect of "re"constructing memories - here is my contention... what is the value in what we construct, if we have no idea whether it is true? How does it give us insight into the person when we do not know whether it is a recount of their true experience or some artifact of the patient-therapist interaction? I know I'm traveling away from the main reading (and I promise to return in another post), but this is well... a point on which I am dwelling.
Freud has to have a biological component to his theory to make it more acceptable because biology, genetics, whatever, is "sexy" right now. If having a biological component at least gets people to not immediately dismiss Freud, and perhaps take another look, then I will take that!
ReplyDeleteI can accept that Freud was right about things, but many (most) others cannot, and if this is a pathway to which people can accept *some* of Freud, then Im okay with it!
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