Is Freudian Psychology a scientifically valid contribution to the Cognitive Sciences?

**~~Ice~~** · 07-11-2019, 05:42 PM

Freudian Psychology is based on the work of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He is the founder of Psychoanalysis and is credited with establishing the field of verbal psychotherapy. Freud is known for his theories of the unconscious mind, dreams, infantile sexuality, libido, repression, and transference, ego, and the superego.

However, despite his acclaimed influence on psychology and psychotherapy, it seems that Freudian Psychology is criticized by many (Horgan, 2017) and is even considered to be pseudoscience.

Is Freudian Psychology considered to be a scientifically valid approach?

**Óttar** · 07-11-2019, 06:01 PM

Yes. He may not have gotten everything right, and he has some strange theories (in Civilization And Its Discontents, he speculates about cavemen having contests pissing on camp-fires), but his work provided a firm foundation for the study of psychology. For the naysayers, it is much easier to point the finger and criticize something than to come up with a robust alternative.

**Roy** · 07-11-2019, 08:01 PM

His theories on how our personality develops and how long it lasts is a bullshit.

**Red Pill** · 08-30-2019, 03:29 PM

I think Freud got a bad rep because of the association of psychoanalysis with Cultural Marxism. This is not however Freud's fault but some of his epigones' or other Marxist thinkers who tried to use some concepts from psychoanalysis to support their own theories. I'm rather skeptic about the effectiveness of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic tool but I think that Freud's basic concepts about the human mind are fundamentally sound. I don't think that Freudian ideas are so iconoclastic either (even if they may have been perceived so by some of his contemporaries who grew under a 'Victorian' sexual morality). For instance, what so iconoclastic and revolutionary with 'Lieben und Arbeiten'? Freud was to a big extent a positivist and not so far apart from the contemporary scientific environment. He was also strongly influenced by classic culture, which is evident in psychoanalysis terminology.