Whats Leftypols opinion on Freud?

Sounds like Einstein wasn't the only one with a theory of relativity if you catch my drift.

I'm by no means an expert, but I think he had some solid theories that were clouded by his coke-induced overconfidence, some possible projection of his own issues, and the divergence of our society from that of upper-crust early 20th-century Imperial Germany. The compensating for small benis thing is still probably accurate though, along with some other stuff.

Not figuring out/accounting for Westermarck was also one of his missteps.

You have to go back.

HIMS Compensator! I haven't seen that in years, thanks for helping me remember better times comr8.

I have two dads.

Pretty much just projected his weird sexual issues on the wider society

Except both Freud/Lacan and Hegel/Marx uses the dialectical process.

mariborchan.si/text/books/slavoj-zizek/the-sublime-object-of-ideology/how-did-marx-invent-the-symptom/

Einstein was a great reader and admirer of the humanities unlike the positivist scum of today the internet mistakes for scientists.

Fascinating that people raise the same against Zizek. In Freud's case it's actually true, he did experiment with it, but he wasn't a long term "addict".

Compensation theory is Jungian and utter shit.

So?

Can you substantiate your claim by quoting one of his actual passages where you think he does that?

Not to mention that both Freud and Marx invented a new praxis and an accompanying theoretical field.

You're gay.

In the only psychology class I took the prof pretty much said he was a talentless hack

And if you took an econ class they'd say the same about Marx.

Being gay isn't any less perverse than being straight as far as human sexuality is concerned.

pinknews.co.uk/2015/02/12/this-advice-by-freud-on-how-to-cure-a-gay-child-may-surprise-you/

Why? He's pretty much just a footnote in the history of psychology now.

And as for Freudianism, it was always a pseudoscientific cult where Freud kept his disciples on eggshells, lest they get on the wrong side of his ego and find themselves expelled. He's basically L. Ron Hubbard without the science fiction

The universe is your will.

In the eyes of neo-classical or keynesian economics the same applies to Marx, yet if you actually take your time to understand the difference you'd understand that there are deep differences in the applied method of analysis.

Again, same with Marx, except psychoanalysis doesn't claim to be 'scientific' (and most modern critical economists think the same about their own field – see Varoufakis or RDW). Psychology isn't scientific either, yet it is at fault at hubris.

The invention, propagation, development, pedagogy, institutionalization (etc.) of a new praxis always faces this excellent. See Lenin.

And your pockets are the spagetti.

p r o b l e m a t i c

most counter-productive filter: 8 out of 10 times it screws up lefty texts

Because one's a theory of politics and the other marketed itself as a scientific theory of the mind.

kek, then the field's made a drastic change from the days of Freud and his disciples aggressively promoting it as such.

And if it's not scientific, what's the point of retaining it, since - again - it was marketed by Freud as a scientific theory of the mind.

Perhaps the most astonishing case is Otto Rank's letter of 1924 in which he attributes his heretical actions to his own neurotic unconscious conflicts, promises to see things "more objectively after the removal of my affective resistance," and notes that Freud "found my explanations satisfactory and has forgiven me personally".

Freud tried so hard to be counter-cultural but you can tell he is still a product of his time. Not because he wouldn't be edgy in some ways, edge is mostly unintentional… but the fact that most would not even take his troll bait these days as the developed world's sexuality and perception of the self is so mutated, Freud would just be some normal guy occasionally making offhand remarks.

In fact he might even be a self-help guru and make a shit ton on books and seminars rather than be a quack psychiatrist by today's standards. Just blame your mother for you being a tranny otherkin who shitposts on Tumblr.

Marx&Engels called their method scientific too. The term meant a different thing in the late 19th, early 20th century than today. Psychology claims to be scientific in the modern sense of the word, psychoanalysis never did.

Psychology, unlikes economics, has some ability to be scientifically proven in the

Besides, even if economics was a hard science (not saying that psycholgy necessarily is) Marx WOULD be demonstraiblly correct and despite economics as it is right now he has a continued relevance even if the neocons and liberals don't want to admit it. Where is Freud correct in the scientific sense or the bullshit psychoanalytical sense?

If anything Freud's "continued relevance" set psychology back because the rise of New Age consumerism was a prime target for these "theories" about how we think and behave that are self-help level nonsense. I honestly don't see how

Lol, it could be scientific if we tried. I work alongside psychologists, they focus on what works and what doesn't and research is critical to this effect. But no apparently we have to pay homage to Freud for literally no reason.

Why is Jung bullshit but not Freud?

Plato is still relevant is philosophy, how is Freud still relevant in psychology or "psychology"?

...

Personally I think that Freudian psychology ignores the individual and the qualia in such a way that the efforts to understand the mind itself are hampered.

Forgot to finish this
In the Karl Popper sense. Economics makes a lot of assumptions about human behaviour and the only person who admits its limitations is Marx. Psychology is in a shit state and it needs to critically reasses how it conducts itself. The first on the chopping block should be psychoanalysis.

There's no "Freudian psychology". There's psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis.

Sorry, meant psychoanalysis.

Considering how seriously Freud and his followers treated psychoanalysis, I don't believe they viewed it as any less of a science than other theories of the mind and human behaviour.

Which runs counter to the decades of desperate yet ultimately futile attempts by psychoanalysists after Freud to link discoveries in psychology to psychoanalysis. Claims to the contrary reek of sour grapes

>let's deal with the internal crisis of a field [psychology] that emerged from the complete denial of another [psychoanalysis] by criticizing the latter
I see we have an expert here.

Such as?

Explain.

It's so odd to see a stark contrast in the scientists of the early-middle twentieth century, and those today. People like Schrodinger were influenced by Schoppy, and had interests in the humanities. Now you have clowns like Tyson spouting Rationalia.

Most scientist are so confident they can explain everything using science, yet they can't explain what matter is.

Therefore its all bullshit :^)

A great deal more time investment is needed to remain at the frontiers of research.

It can't profess to having access to eternal truths, only observing phenomena. Read Hume.

You look at what people like Feynman did in their spare time, and tell me that they couldn't have been more educated in the humanities. People like Dawkin's who make some of the most egregious tweets regarding philosophy, and then call themselves intellectuals.

In the days of Feynman, QED was a new thing. Nowadays in theoretical physics you need to be at least acquainted with further developments in quantum field theory, string theory, and condensed matter theory, not to mention all the math required to understand it. Maybe Feynman just wasn't all that interested in humanities.

All that material is simply relative to the period humans occupied. I don't know if their really does exist an upper-bound on human intelligence, or if we'll be able to surpass it if genetic engineering becomes a reality. My point is that these scientists who are ignorant in the humanities need to be shut up when trying to profess their cancer on their scientific pedagogue and demand to be taken seriously.

cri evertim

nah :^)

There's a complete regression of methodology from psychoanalysis to psychology.

(I'm going to simplify things.)

Psychoanalysis is first interested in theorizing basic organizational structures of subjectivity, and understands that each individual 'fills in' their respective structures.

If your structure of subjectivity is "neurotic" we can detect some basic organizational principles in your psychic life, most notably repression of certain thoughts. What these exact thoughts are and how you relate to them (your fantasies) are determined by your individual history. In other words there are no two neurotics the same. In clinical praxis alleviation of your suffering doesn't come from me telling you that "I diagnosed you such and such" but by helping you discover the structure through your individual content.

The similarity with Marxist theory is apparent: analyse the system, lay down your theory, observe how the movements in the concrete relate to it, make them apparent.

Psychology presupposes a normalcy from which suffering people deviate from. Their rapidly and ever-growing list of "illnesses," "syndromes," and "disorders" are very telling.

You are diagnosed (based on a literal check-list) as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder," then the psychologist offers you some form of therapy determined to be most fitting by statistical data. In other words the individual is completely left behind, your problem is just like a virus, or an autoimmun disease to the doctor.

The similarity with dominant economic theories is also apparent: complete lack of first defining your own terms and taking them at face value, borrowing from hard sciences to endlessly patch the resulting holes, etc.

The other user (although a complete ignoramus) is correct in one thing: psychologists know that their field is in total disarray. The resulting praxis (the horror known as DSM) based on these "scientific findings" is such a counter-productive shitshow they themselves can't take seriously anymore. What they keep doing in hopes of solving problems and the results don't add up.

So why do they keep doing it? For a hint just look at how the different economists tried and failed to analyse and to propose solutions to the current economic crisis. Anything but the complete re-evaluation of methodology (the result would be anti-capitalist) – it would reveal you as an ideologue.

Wait for the arrival of a Piketty of psychology soon. A humble faux-radical not committed to complete change praised as the next messiah of the field.

Like what? Whatever you might have against, for instance, Dawkins, I think his articulation of a non-religious, pro-evolution worldview was an overwhelmingly positive thing. Keep in mind that in the US a nontrivial number of people think the planet is 6000 years old.

twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/334656775196393473
That for instance. I don't hate Dawkins, but I hate what him and other mainstream scientists have done to science, they've turned it from a job tasked with observing, recording and explaining physical phenomena, to a career in which the only absolute truths that exist are scientific ones.

Yes, sure, why not, but then you admit that he also sneaks in a positivist and reductionist world-view, only achieves in his audience exchanging the religious concept of the "soul" to the humanist concept of "human essence", and festers a subculture that started raising literal churches for atheism.

From this perspective he does more damage than good.

Communist, that is.

...

A few questions: How is the success rate for people being treated in psychoanalysis v other forms of therapy? Didn't Lacan have a high rate of patients commiting suicide? And doesn't Lacanian psychoanalysis fundamentally depend on Saussarian linguistics being correct?

Have humanities scholars discovered any absolute truths?

I mean the ideal and in some abstract way, communism is definitely humanist. It just so happened to be the case that Lenin, Stalin and so on were not.

Is the Lacan mega pack a meme or worth reading?

humanities scholars don't make claims that they have, only inquiries. The modern scientist acts as a God.

Communism stopped being humanist when Marxism became a thing. Unless you mean humanist in some reduced form of love for humanity and memes.

The first anti-humanist communist was in fact Marx.

That's a tricky question because you can't have an objective definition of success. If you call being sedated and experiencing erectile dysfunction but at the same time not being so sad all the time a success, then psychology is the Mother Teresa of the masses.

If you believe that the individual creates his own suffering then the road to success is obviously much harder.

Lacan took the hardest cases his colleagues refused, or psychiatrists would just confine. Otherwise, I'm not really moved by this line of reasoning. Clinical experience is laborious, you are trying to unearth the way you sabotage yourself while hiding this from yourself.

Saussure's theory of the signifier in specific, which he further develops. I'm not familiar with any serious criticism of Saussure and I'm studying linguistics.

mega.nz/#F!DJdkhYTR!gNrR2Hm7we5O0dyfwBHG0g
Read 1997 → 2007 → 1995

Let me remind you that this is a thing:
facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/reflections-on-rationalia/10154399608556613/

The weight of evidence suggests that slave-economies are much more efficient at allocating resources ;;))

The evidence from the kibbutza and other such institutions is rather weak, since it's common in nearly all societies from men to marry younger and vice versa. Female fertility peaks in her early twenties and male fertility peaks at about 30, evolution may play a part in this

My main concern was actually the linguistics part. I just figured it was outdated.

Humanities don't really work that way. Saussure missed some important details, sure, but he was pretty much the discoverer of a completely new field and his main observations stand unchallenged, so cut him some slack. Lacan uses Jakobson too, his contemporary.

underrated post

go away motherfucker

Other than Sam Harris, is there anyone who really claims that? Last time I checked everyone e agreed with Sagan that "its as good of a tool that we are gonna get".

Sure, but the thing is it does help a lot of people understand what their issues are and working through them. I agree that its not as successful as some psychologists claim them to be, and I don't live in Burgerland where you might as well not even try, but do you really have to define "an objective definition of success"? But more importantly, isn't that exactly what Freud was doing when he discovered that his patients had some sort of problem that needed to be fixed?

In what way though? What is the specific problems that psychologists are encountering? Additionally, what are some successes that psychoanalysts touched upon?

Doesn't science require re-working and experimentation?

Discredited. Read Jung.

L Ron Hubbard was right to choose Korszybski and Crowley over Jung and Freud.

Making people articulate their problems in terms dictated by biopolitics isn't a help. It's "common sense" in late stage capitalism, but no real help.

In the very beginning of his career Freud was automatically assigned the cases (mostly hysteria) his superiors deemed to be untreatable so his attitude towards his patient was different from the already established modus operandi of the clinic: he listened, he had to listen. This lead him being able to cure people otherwise considered fakers and cases of anomalies, and eventually to formulating a radically different methodology. In other words not pretending to know how to "fix people" is much more effective than thinking to know.

If you ask a psychologist with a fresh diploma who pretends to be a part of scientific discourse, he'll say that he already has an objective definition and praxis (DSM). If you ask a psychoanalyst he'll say that there are no two similar cases, not even two remotely similar individuals, thus pretensions of objectivity is a charade. This is what I was already alluding to when I said that psychologists leave the individual completely behind.

If you understand the paragraph above you understand why collecting patients' data to be further formalized in statistics is a flawed method (also, their only card for achieving the status of scientificity).

If you understand the paragraph above you understand that in order to re-work their field they first need to abandon the allusions to and methodology of scientificity.

Jung was the first regression after Freud. His "archetypes" are religion tier.

Jung, the inventor of the first RPG character creation kit!

Which works of Freud should I read before Lacan?

I have:
Interpretation of Dreams
Totem & Taboo
The Ego and the Id
Civilization and its Discontents

Do I need more?

Is Freud a leftist?

He was a political pessimist, an atheist, and skeptical of governments in general.

Most assuredly he is an anti-fascist:

Start with the Greeks :^)

Freudposter linked to a mega folder which includes several introductory books to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. I have read those and recommend starting with them rather than jumping straight to Lacan because his French is extremely complex.

I'm reading the Symposium right now. :^)

Got them, but user, I'm asking for which works of Sigmund Freud, not later writers, am I supposed to read before I get to Lacan.

I strongly recommend reading 1997 from

to get a general gist of it. At the end of that book there's a concise and thematized study guide, titled "recommended reading."

Alright, I'm adding Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis since they're the most quoted, and given their title.

Vile

timeshighereducation.com/books/the-shrink-from-hell/159376.article

...

Now S&B have shown, what no one has hitherto been knowledgeable enough to demonstrate: precisely what was wrong with Lacan's use of mathematics. It is not only empty glitter but also internally flawed. Lacan's writings, in addition to being bad or lunatic psychiatry, are also bad mathematics. Lacan, S&B show, makes advanced errors – muddling the very specific technical meanings of certain terms from topology (such as `compactness') and so on. But he also makes elementary ones, as when he confuses irrational and imaginary numbers or the universal and the existential quantifier – the latter the kind of mistake a first week student in mathematical logic would not perpetrate.

With the help of his pseudo-mathematics, Lacan could gibber for hours, while his disciples listened in silence:

I will posit here the term `compactness'. Nothing is more compact than a fault, assuming that the intersection of everything that is closed therein is accepted as existing over an infinite number of sets, the result being that the intersection implies this infinite number. That is the very definition of compactness … (quoted p. 21)
The confusion here – pointed out by S&B – of the topological notion of compactness with other notions within and without topology would have entirely escaped the attention of his un-mathematically schooled audience. One wonders what they thought as they listened to this stuff for hours. Perhaps they were simply awestruck, like the villagers in Goldsmith's poem: `And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, / That one small head could carry all he knew.' A wonder that would have been greater had anyone among the psychoanalysts and other quasi-medical hangers on at his seminars noted the all-too-obvious and tragic fact that that head was afflicted for its last years with a progressive dementia.
physics.nyu.edu/sokal/tallis.html

The art of psychology must be used to destroy any fear that individuals might have of organizing and collectivizing.

Do you get bewildered when you see that the phallus is the square root of negative one?
Why are you getting so angry over this, instead of trying to read and discover what he meant by this?
What happened to you in your childhood that turned you into such a positivist? :◊)

He was wrong about pretty much everything, founded a pseudoscience cult of psychoanalysis which fucking aggravates me to no end. Other than that, i dont care about him in the slightest.

:^)

How will mathematical language make concepts easier for non-mathematicians to understand? Compactness is a nontrivial concept…

Psychoanalysis is not a science in the current positivist-empirical understanding of science, but it is in the old sense that it is a method that you can use to obtain knowledge, to put in simple terms.

So does psychoanalysis makes no testable claims, and I assume it doesn't prove any theorems. What is an example of something that I can know through psychoanalysis?

...

Well psychoanalysis is a type of clinical therapy, so its theories have been put to test in thousands of clinics across France and elsewhere. I'm not really sure what specific claims though you need addressed.

...

Why is it that the people most in need of treatment get pissed off by Freud?

kek

Psychoanalysis resists empirical testing because of how vague and flexible its central tenets are (the Unconscious, topographical model of personality, childhood events determining present functioning, etc). Everything can be explained away by "unconscious conflict" and untestable drives and shit. However, looking at in it a positivistic sense is to undermine its strengths as a theoretical/epistemological framework. Freud was a trained physician so he's not unfamiliar with medical practice and scientific rigor, yet he emphasized that psychoanalysis was not supposed to be a "medical" model. Psychoanalysis is fundamentally symbolic and its comprehensive detailing of psychological functioning and structure in this intuitive metaphorical sense is why I think it's still so persistent. Freud's ideas have deeply embedded themselves in culture and collective consciousness.

Psychoanalytical therapy has demonstrated efficacy for various diagnoses, so even if it's "bullshit" or untestable, it still has clinical relevance. Why? Beyond placebo effects, I think the way it symbolically allows us to analyze our behavior and develop/work through our self-narratives gives it therapeutic power. Psychology is a "fuzzy" science at heart; it's not as straightforward as being able to measure concrete things and apply mathematical formulas (though there are psychological frameworks that do strive for these "harder" scientific methods). There's something profound in being able to explain why things are the way they are; perhaps not so much in the specific conclusions we draw, but in the process of explaining itself.

While I would hesitate to apply psychodynamic techniques (cogntive-behavioral ones tend to be more efficacious anyway), especially taking things for granted and making matter-of-factly assumptions of people, I've always been fascinated by the theories themselves. They're comprehensive frameworks through which you can develop new ideas and reconsider old ones. Certainly they're not the final word on knowledge, humanity, psychology, and science–nothing is. But it's still a very powerful landmark in psychology and culture and continues to shape our ideas. That's just good philosophy.

Judging the validity of a theory should not be strictly limited to the empirical, because that denies the fallibly of empirical testing as well. I don't think there's any trend in science right now that was present during Kants time, but Newtonian physics are an empirical world view. Your last paragraph really captures what people dismissing psychoanalysis are missing.