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people like Freudian psychoanalysis for the same reasons they like astrology (psychological/behavioral analysis systems that are neat, procedural, and broad to the point that correctness can always be read into them) and if anyone, say, a college professor, formulates a sentence to the tune of “Freud was right” that person is disregarding Freud’s significant legacy of Wrongness about women knowable in assertions of Freud’s that are both materially unambiguously false e.g. the theory of vaginal vs clitoral orgasms (not a thing!) and perniciously misogynistic in ways with significant social and political implications e.g. the theory of penis envy
the perspective that “Freud was right” is often espoused alongside a sort of academic “great man” view of psychological history, despite that Freud’s ideas, while influential and frequently idiosyncratic, were in no radical discontinuity with the rest of his field. for example, Freud’s views on homosexuality were heavily influenced by Richard Von Krafft Ebing and Magnus Hirschfeld - and why shouldn’t they be? if a psychologist were seeking to understand homosexuality from an educated/upper class European perspective in the early 20th century, that one could do little better than to seek out these preeminents in the sexological field. Freud was a man who read the literature and wrote in response to it.
people like Freudian psychoanalysis for the same reasons they like astrology (psychological/behavioral analysis systems that are neat, procedural, and broad to the point that correctness can always be read into them) and if anyone, say, a college professor, formulates a sentence to the tune of “Freud was right” that person is disregarding Freud’s significant legacy of Wrongness about women knowable in assertions of Freud’s that are both materially unambiguously false e.g. the theory of vaginal vs clitoral orgasms (not a thing!) and perniciously misogynistic in ways with significant social and political implications e.g. the theory of penis envy
the perspective that “Freud was right” is often espoused alongside a sort of academic “great man” view of psychological history, despite that Freud’s ideas, while influential and frequently idiosyncratic, were in no radical discontinuity with the rest of his field. for example, Freud’s views on homosexuality were heavily influenced by Richard Von Krafft Ebing and Magnus Hirschfeld - and why shouldn’t they be? if a psychologist were seeking to understand homosexuality from an educated/upper class European perspective in the early 20th century, that one could do little better than to seek out these preeminents in the sexological field. Freud was a man who read the literature and wrote in response to it.
