Stiletto One

OK, I'm always hearing about id/ego/superego, and Freudian slips, and repressed emotions and whatnot...

(I've also heard of Sigmund Freud, by name)

So my question is, what exactly did he do, in terms of psychology?

Philosoft

Freud is known for many things. Some you may have heard of:

He is the originator of psychoanalysis, a questionable method of determining the contents of the "unconscious," predicated on "psychic determinism," which held that the contents of the unconscious were predictable, based on the patient's life experiences and his reactions to those experiences.

He came up with Psychosexual Stages of Development, a rather crude explanation of how childrens develop their own sense of sexuality.

He is also known for the Oedipus Complex, a boy's feeling of attraction for his mother, usually during the Genital phase of his development.

How in depth do you need to get?

Stiletto One

As in depth as you people can get.

This isn't for a paper or anything, just research on my own time; so I just want to get as much info as possible. (I can worry about understanding it later )

los

If you do a search, there are many, many sites with his work. Here is one to start:

http://users.rcn.com/brill/freudarc.html



And if you are interested in psychology and not just Freud, I would also suggest some research on Jung. Here is another one to start:

http://www.cgjungpage.org


Happy reading!

Psycho Economist

If you want as in-depth as possible, there's no substitute for Psych courses.

Freud got the ball rolling for Psychology in the public mind, and broke it out of Wilhelm Wundt's philosophising about the experience of submerging one's hand in a bucket of icewater for three minutes. He was the first to recognize or care about such a thing as mental disorders.

Other than that, his influences (i.e. belief in a seprate and whole unconscious, that dreams are more than what you make of them) are mainly the province of a romantic fringe of big-city therapists. The things to come out of Psychology post-Freud have pretty much overwhelmed his contributions, just like the things to come out of physics after Archemides.

Jackalope

Look for a book titled Freudian Fraud. It explains pretty much how Freud came up with his theories (and some of them are pretty whack-ass) and why they ended up getting so widely propagated.

--Lee

lpetrich

I do think that there are some differences.

Archimedes's work was built on and improved by later generations, while Freud's has largely been left behind.

A better comparison may be with Isaac Newton. His work on mathematics, astronomy, and physics has been very enduring and successful. Even such "replacements" like relativity and quantum mechanics have Newtonian mechanics as a limiting case, and otherwise follow some Newtonian-mechanics paradigms, like recognizing laws of conservation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum.

However, his "work" on chemistry and theology is much less known; he was interested in alchemy, and he was preoccupied with interpreting Biblical prophecies.

(grammar correction)

Bree

Do you think Freud is still legit? Or is he outdated and cliche in this day and age?

Corey Hammer

Like all science, you have to reject what is false and accept what has evidence.

Some of Freud's hypotheses have been validated (e.g., Oedipal complexes) while others (e.g., penis envy, repression as he described) have been rejected as false or untestable (respectively). Suffice to say, though I despise his work, some of it has evidence for being correct. His view of child sexual assault, at least, has been roundly disproven.

Freud is simply used a lot in popular culture because he work is well-known. He had a very dystopic view of human behavior which sharply contrasts with the later work of Carl Rogers, a humanistic psychologist.

He was not the first to be interested in mental health. He was simply the most popular in the Unites States during the early part of this century thanks to G. Stanley Hall. I recommend a history of Psychology course for a full discussion of this.

Jackalope

Reference? Last I checked, that's another unverifiable one.

--Lee