Barb and I recently visited Central Europe. In Vienna we were walking from our Air B & B to some sort of public transportation to visit Schönbrunn Palace (the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers set on what amounts to a 400-acre park) when I saw this and did a double take:
What? Oh, yeah, Freud was from Vienna!
In high school there was a psychology class, and I heard other students talking about the Id, Super Ego, Oedipus Complex, etc. I read a little about it and was not impressed. It wasn’t like so many other classes I took, like the math and science stuff which once the teacher introduced a topic it “just made sense”. Of course this was right, it fit in with everything else I knew. This psychology stuff was something different. Did the human mind really work like this? It just didn’t make sense to me and I didn’t take the class.
In college I had to take some “humanities” classes and in what I think was my second or third semester I took Psych 101. One of the first things the professor said was, paraphrasing:
Freud created the science of psychology. Other than the existence and importance of the unconscious mind, we have painstakingly proved everything he said about the human mind is not true.
Freud was such a powerful figure it had taken two generations after his death to finally reach the point where people called B.S. on his work. And to this day we still have remnants of his legacy with Markley’s Law.
I loved that psychology class. It wasn’t the “this makes sense” type of stuff to the extent of the of math and the hard sciences but it was based on decent research and did make a certain amount of sense. I took numerous other psych classes throughout my undergraduate years and probably was close to having a minor degree in psychology. It was really easy and I got A’s in all of them.
Now here I am, a two-minute walk from Frued’s office and residence. Whatever I think of Freud’s work, I have to see this museum. The next day, on September 1st, we visited the museum.
It was a little disappointing, but I’m glad I did it. Here are a few pictures:
Barb reading about the family tree:
This is an art exhibit at the museum, it is not his real couch:
Im not sure if his work has been proved false, or proved limited.
The ideal gas law is not false, per se, but it only gives a usable approximation under certain conditions (low pressure, high volume, etc.)
Other gas laws exist that are more broadly applicable, but even they break down at some point.
I think Freud’s work can perhaps be considered to be a useful first approximation, rather than “proved false.”
At some point every scientific theory is a model, an abstraction, a fiction. We made it up to try to describe our world in terms we can understand.
Gotta start somewhere.
Some of the science based youtubers who’s content I enjoy have a saying “All models are wrong. Some models are useful”.
Sigmund Freud Quotes:
A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity
Fact checkers say this is a fake quote but they often lie so who knows.
Several sons and grandsons served in the (British and US) army.
Freud’s influence was greatly assisted by his patron and associate, Marie Bonaparte.
As mentioned above, one’s research must start somewhere. And Freud is as good a place as any for his field.
I’m just always reminded of how much joy he brought to the idiot caste. As they smugly pronounce their judgements upon you, based on his work. Your what they thought he meant in his work.
Such as Markley Monday’s.
I never studied the man. Seeing the actions and hearing from his adherents was more than enough to form an opinion on.
And shy away from.
If reading the man’s work gets coupled with low IQ can produce those results?
It was definitely no place for me.