Freud: Everywhere but psychology, he’s welcome

Seems that Sigmund is now a pariah in his own field. According to a study by the American Psychoanalytic Association, psychoanalysis, which is almost a staple term in the humanities, is now effectively extinct in psychology. Seems unfair, doesn’t it?

According to a bemused New York Times: “The study, which is to appear in the June 2008 issue of psychiatry’s flagship journal, The American Journal of Psychiatry, is the latest evidence of the field’s existential crisis. For decades now, critics engaged in the Freud Wars have pummeled the good doctor’s theories for being sexist, fraudulent, unscientific, or just plain wrong. In their eyes, psychoanalysis belongs with discarded practices like leeching.” That seems to sum up the cultural shift which has moved psychology from psyche to science. Apparently there are still a few actual psychoanalysts left, probably, from the tentative sound of the article, on wildlife reserves. One envisions a magnificent couch, on some African savannah, waiting for the migration to the mating grounds, where kindly, bearded patriarchs emerge from their Viennese solitudes to stalk towards their archetypal image… Well, actually, one envisions a sort of composite image of psychoanalysis and methods, and adds Africa… Why does one do that? The concern is now that since nobody, or almost nobody, doing psychology is being taught psychoanalysis, that someone might misapply the ideas of psychoanalysis… A new computer report has shown that of 1175 courses offering psychoanalysis, 86% were outside psychology. Freud is now seen as an “interpreter” in the humanities, which is a pretty clumsy way of expressing the process of trying to find a working logic in the rather variable minds of human beings. In some cases putting a scrambled egg back together would be simpler. It’s a little disingenuous/cute of psychology and the humanities to assume no lineage to their ideas. Particularly after several generations spent all that money on psychoanalysis. The humanities also apply the ideas differently, so psychoanalysis in psychology, and psychoanalysis in the humanities, are completely different, and applied differently: “The humanities and social sciences have welcomed psychoanalysis without caveats. But the report complains of the wide gulf between the academic’s and the psychoanalyst’s approach and vocabulary, which has made their respective applications of Freud’s theories virtually unrecognizable to each other.” The NYT is a bit wary throughout, about digging around in these depths of intellectual digression, and academic dissipation, and so am I. The article very prudently ends with a comment from an actual, trained, psychoanalyst, to the effect that some day the science will return to psychoanalysis. When the new president of the American Psychoanalytic Association admits that when humanities courses referred to forms of psychoanalysis, she couldn’t understand a word, I think you can say the playing field has moved. Freud is an interpreter, and that’s what’s so significant about his work. Sciences routinely attach values and meanings to processes, and that is basically how he approached his work. The man lived in a different world, and putting our current social PC values on his work is as absurd as expecting Neanderthals to fly jet planes. As for fraudulent, decide for yourselves. This is something called freudfile.org, which includes some of the theories and ideas. In my view, Freud was trying to address a subject few have ever successfully even described: The human race. It's hardly an exact science.