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Topic: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"? (Read 3718 times)

Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Quote
After more than a century mining the unconscious, psychoanalysis is really showing its age.

Only 15 percent of members in the American Psychoanalytic Association are under 50. And traditional Freudian analysis — lying on a couch, talking about your childhood, day after day for years — is widely seen as a musty relic, far too expensive and intensive to fit into modern life.

But analysts aren’t ready to give up on Sigmund yet.
(source, and continuation)
I have two questions:
One: Is psychoanalysis science?
And, two: Is it any different from Scientology?

(Those few of you who can't get over it can rail against the result of the recent U.S. presidential election… I may respond.)

What thoughts have you? :)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #1 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL on
I have two questions:
One: Is psychoanalysis science?
And, two: Is it any different from Scientology?
Neither is a question about spelling.

I have another question: Should an Oakdale be invested with the authority to determine what is science?

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #2 –
Freud means "joy". Fraud means "deception". Is that the same thing? Maybe ask a psychologist.

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #4 –
Americans are addicted to psychoanalysis, so it seems. No one cares about it at this part of the globe.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Belfrager on
No one cares about it at this part of the globe.
They're still using it  to support communism…

How's life on the farm, BTW? :)
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Quote from: jax on
Freud means "joy". Fraud means "deception".
I think that's freude and fraude. :P

This Freud is quite joyful. Names don't always adhere to modern spelling standards. Then again, by modern map standards Sigmund Freud was Czech. Like many famous Austrians he was born and grew up in what today is Czechia.

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #7 –
@Frenzie
Freude = (poetisch) Freud
example: joy and sorrow = Freud und Leid

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #8 –
…well of course, although I'd be more inclined to call it a fossil word. :)

Vreu(g)de is Germanic while fraude comes from Latin (through French). In the Hollandic dialects vreugde used to be vroude, which is logically the kind of form we'd also expect in English. But there it doesn't seem to exist.

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #10 –
Well we do have to make allowances for Oakdale. He is an American so affected by the natonal  grey cells issue and secondly an awful long time in the house so brain exercise can be an issue...... :up:
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #11 –
Excepting {i]RJ[/i], I've appreciated all of your comments.

The one that caught my attention -and that I'd like to pursue- was Belfrager's — that Freudian psychology is now only an American thing… Is that true, that Freudian psychology is all-but gone from the Continent?
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #12 –
What exactly is it that you mean by Freudian psychology? Freud's theory of consciousness can offer useful bits and pieces, and of course he's responsible for popularizing the unconscious. Even if his specific interpretations are off the mark,[1] the concept itself has a clear scientific foundation now even if it wasn't provided by Freud. But reading Freud isn't like reading Darwin. When you read Darwin it quickly becomes apparent that most people haven't. When you read Freud, somewhat surprisingly, it would seem that most people have![2]

I'd say those parts of psychoanalysis that still have something to offer have been fully integrated (or if you're a fan: assimilated) into regular cognitive and social psychology, and whatever other fields deal directly or indirectly with neurophysiology, even if they might deny it. However, ultimately all of that links much more directly to Jung's refinements than to Freud.

Then there's psychoanalysis as an art. For better or worse, I think that whole soul squeezing[3] business is indeed on its last legs if it's still around. To me it has always felt as an outdated concept from up to '50s or '60s that somehow lived on in American TV shows (and therefore presumably also in real-life America). Of course there's also the Sigmund cartoon in a Dutch newspaper.
1 Id, ego, superego… but most notably that whole repression business.↵
2 Or at least, that they've read or heard fairly adequate summaries.↵
3 Dutch derogatory term for what a psychiatrist does.↵

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
But reading Freud isn't like reading Darwin. When you read Darwin it quickly becomes apparent that most people haven't. When you read Freud, somewhat surprisingly, it would seem that most people have!
This is interesting. Why the comparison and what's the difference? Both the difference between Freud and Darwin and how people seem to have read the one and not the other. For the record, I have read Darwin directly, but not Freud.

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #14 –
I'm basically saying that in my opinion Freud doesn't rise above his popular stereotypes, while Darwin is not only more sophisticated but completely different.[1] It's lame to explain jokes, but the "it would seem that most people have!" was an in-joke for those who have read Freud. His writing is quite abstruse, a bit like some of those French post-structuralists, yet summarizing it to repression and penis-envy gets you surprisingly close to the gist of it.
1 I suppose that what popular culture thinks of as Darwin is actually Haeckel.↵

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL on
Excepting {i]RJ[/i], I've appreciated all of your comments.

The one that caught my attention -and that I'd like to pursue- was Belfrager's — that Freudian psychology is now only an American thing… Is that true, that Freudian psychology is all-but gone from the Continent?

It's mostly a thing of the past, everywhere. As recent as the 1970's Freudian psychoanalysis was a thing, but not what psychology students studied. It continued in niches, like Hollywood, for many decades, "let me tell you about my mother"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQlexoUBY0E

Even in that niche of movies and TV series Freud is becoming a rarity. 

In the 1990's we learned how the brain worked. Nowaday more trials are double-blind randomized controlled, and sometimes replicated. A large portion of psychology results have not been replicated.  

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
I'm basically saying that in my opinion Freud doesn't rise above his popular stereotypes, while Darwin is not only more sophisticated but completely different.
I can't comment on or compare with Freud, but when I read Darwin directly, my opinion of him (Darwin) sank. One of the specific points was his definition of species, "I look at the term species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for mere convenience sake."

So, species is the same as variety and applied arbitrarily. Where's the sophistication in this? How is this non-definition supposed to help explain the origin of species which the book is about? When you define species into non-existence, does it explain the origins? How about if someone said that language is the same thing as dialect or the same thing as variation? Loony, right? Certainly it does nothing to explain the origins of language. And the comparison with languages is not accidental - Darwin himself applied the analogy of linguistic classification to highlight his point about (universal) common descent in the way that should clarify the fallacy to linguists very well.

I find Alfred Russel Wallace (whom I have also read directly) both a better biologist and a more thorough thinker. Man's Place in the Universe is his cosmology, his sophistication on display to the fullest. Even though he does not convince me of (Darwinian) evolution either.

Quote from: Frenzie on
I suppose that what popular culture thinks of as Darwin is actually Haeckel.
Maybe him too. But certainly Herbert Spencer, "survival of the fittest" with its implied social Darwinism and eugenics. This is part of everyone's image of Darwin, as far as I know.

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: ersi on
So, species is the same as variety and applied arbitrarily. Where's the sophistication in this? How is this non-definition supposed to help explain the origin of species which the book is about? When you define species into non-existence, does it explain the origins? How about if someone said that language is the same thing as dialect or the same thing as variation? Loony, right?
I would have to investigate to judge. As I recall he's probably simply saying that he's using species as a shorthand for populations without going into the nitty-gritty and that the way most people are using these words (in 1860!) is inadequate. Note that the book's full title is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. As I recall it would've been more accurate to call it On Natural Selection (or, slightly catchier if you ask me, just Natural Selection). But since natural selection does cause speciation, I'd say the origin of species is explained well enough. Back in 1860, On the Origin of Species was probably a lot catchier from the publisher's perspective.

Quote from: ersi on
I find Alfred Russel Wallace (whom I have also read directly) both a better biologist and a more thorough thinker. Man's Place in the Universe is his cosmology, his sophistication on display to the fullest. Even though he does not convince me of (Darwinian) evolution either.
Saying psychoanalysis is worthless pseudoscience based on Freud would be a lot less silly than discounting evolutionary theory based on Darwin's writings, but both would amount to strawmen. Or as the psychoanalyst from the OP says, “People say, ‘Oh, does that mean you’re Freudian?’ That’s kind of like asking a modern-day nuclear physicist whether he’s Copernican.” That's obviously unfair to both Freud and Darwin, but it applies nonetheless. You can't hope to steelman the argument you oppose that way.

Just about the oldest popular scientific book you'd be able to get away with imo is The Selfish Gene, at least in its second edition from 1989. But that's a slightly different kind of book. Something like The Beak of the Finch (1994) by Jonathan Weiner, Evolution (2006) by Carl Zimmer or Why Evolution Is True (2010) by Jerry Coyne is probably a lot closer to the kind of book you'd want to engage with. Or of course one of Dawkins' own later books.

Quote from: ersi on
Maybe him too. But certainly Herbert Spencer, "survival of the fittest" with its implied social Darwinism and eugenics. This is part of everyone's image of Darwin, as far as I know.
I don't know if that's true here, but I imagine it likely is in the English-speaking world.

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #18 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
I would have to investigate to judge.
Darwin's concept of species appears in the context of contrasting his own definition with the/an other where species is understood as a "distinct act of creation", i.e. in terms of that which makes the species special, whatever it may be. Darwin rejects this and prefers groupings based on similarities, where similarity is just similarity, not that which is special to the species.

And I found my older post quoting Darwin's analogy with linguistics https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=2498.msg68514#msg68514

Quote from: Frenzie on
Saying psychoanalysis is worthless pseudoscience based on Freud would be a lot less silly than discounting evolutionary theory based on Darwin's writings, but both would amount to strawmen.
I'm reasonably up-to-date on the state of biology. The reasons to reject the evolutionary theory are several, not just Darwin's writings. We may get to those.

Quote from: Frenzie on
As I recall it would've been more accurate to call it On Natural Selection (or, slightly catchier if you ask me, just Natural Selection).
Which is what makes Alfred Russel Wallace better, because he is all about natural selection, examining and exemplifying the concept from every possible angle in his biological writings.

Re: Does spelling matter? Is it "Freud" or "fraud"?

Reply #19 –
You are trying to be grey cell superior dear Oakdale. Do get out more dear man it will be a big help!
"Quit you like men:be strong"