'Freud for Beginners'

:p 3 blogs at one go to compensate for the 'deadness' on my blog for the past month.

I just finished reading 'Freud for Beginners' today. Hooray, one thing to tick of my 'to do list' this holiday. I thought I needed to get in touch with this man, who's ideas most people think is fundamental in psychology, but is actually De-NouNced in the psychology education I had. The book has not really changed how I feel about Freud.

Psychology has greatly criticized Freud as unscientific. His theories are thought to be un-falsifiable (It says A is B, but when A is not B, it explains why A is not B too). It is also based on research on a relatively small and specific group of clients (for the conclusions he makes). The clients that he has are mostly upper/middle class Jewish women with neurotic/ hysteric tendencies. He has no objective measure of what he was finding out. He was the person writing the notes and they were usually done at the end of the day when he as seen many clients throughout the day.

Based on the above, it may be pretty amazing how his ideas became so famous, and have started a psychoanalysis as a form of therapy of the psychologically ill. Still they are ideas (notwithstanding 'fluffy' as a friend would call it) that revolutionalized how we thought about ourselves and how we think. What is the 'unconscious' and could it affect the way we behave and interpret the information we receive about the world? (I must admit I do not fully understand Freud's works... this is just off the top of my head)

Freud's theories do not account for all instances of psychological behaviour and is essentially male-dominated. His 'Oedipal complex', talks about the boy when growing up, falls in love with his mother, but because of fear of his father suppresses this sexual desire. The girl is described as 'a boy with a little bit less' as she is said to have a similar complex which is based on having 'penis envy'. His 'oedipal complex' theory does not also talk much about in other situations where the children are not cared for by the parents; neither does it say anything about sibling rivalry. His idea of dreams as a product of unfulfilled wishes also does not really explain nightmares, although he often explains nightmares in symbols in which is turns out to be unfulfilled wishes.

Still, Freud has many lessons to offer. :) Thought/Ideas can never be bad or useless unless people who recieve them do not make appropriate use of them. Freud's work made people want to explore the psyche more. If not to study his ideas, but to refute them too. It also can be interpreted as a reflection of the time that he was in and how his growing environment and living period affected his work. It also provided us with a strong caveat on how to conduct systematic enquiries on the human mind. I'm sure there are more of Freud's contributions to the understanding of the human mind...