So the other day I am reading up on the life Sylvia Plath and the turmoil she went through. Apparently she did see a psychiatrist for the last ten years of her life (1953-1963). One of the diagnoses that the psychiatrist (most likely schooled in Freudian psychology) made was the she was probably not properly toilet trained as a child and this may have lead to her neuroses!

Okay I haven't been formally trained in pyschology though I've done a lot of reading on my own but something struck me after reading this. Why in gods name do we consider Sigmund Freud the modern "father of psychology"?!! What exactly did this man contribute to the study of the mind?

Let's see. We have the concept of penus envy...We have the diagnoses of "hysteria" which was pretty much a catch all diagnoses for just about any problem a woman was having. Granted he didn't come up with this concept but he expanded on it. We have pronouncements with ZERO scientific evidence that the way a child is toilet trained can have a dramtic effect on their psyche. We have the idea that many neuroses are caused by the suppression of "unconscience" painful memories. I think from what we know now about "recovered memories" and "hypnosis" that this is all utter hogwash. We have the practice of "free association" and dream interpretation (nonsense for the most part), etc, etc...

I had this debate with someone who argued that "Well Freud came up with the idea of treating someone's mental problems with talk therapy". I'm sorry but this was NOT a breakthrough. Any layman from the past three hundred years could probably tell you tell that if you have a problem it's good to talk to someone about it. This is not any kind of "revelation". They may not have used the term "psychoanalysis" but the idea is the same. The other argument the person used was that Freud came up with the concept of human "drives". Things that drive all human beings towards certain behaviors. Again, was this really a breakthrough? Wasn't this concept pretty much layed out by Darwin and his successors? Not to mention that I think even most laypeople understood that things like "hunger","sex", and "self-preservation" are basic drives that are common to humanity (with the possible exception of some of the religious kooks of the time).

My main problem with Freud is that he seemed to be UTTERLY unscientific. He didn't run experiments to test these theories out, he just postulated them and than began acting on them when counseling his patients! In other words Sigmund Freud basically practiced WITCHDOCTORY! For a woman to go to a counselor due to epileptic seizures and to be diagnosed with a mental condition resulting from the supposed "suppresion of sexual desires" is something one might expect from a witchdoctor in tribal New Guinea of the time, not from the "father of modern psychology"! In fact not only did Sigmund Freud most likely NOT cure anyone of ANYTHING he contributed to the practice of psychology that probably did more HARM than GOOD! At least if one was treated by a real witchdoctor with a few herbs and some chanting it probably wouldn't have done any HARM unlike Freud's practice of psychology--blaming parents for the neuroses of their kids when this wasn't the case, implanting false ideas and memories into people's minds, telling them that their lustful desires for a parent contributed to their condition, etc.

Can someone explain this to me? Maybe I'm missing something. Because it seems to me like Freud should be the posterboy of what NOT to do in either the field of science, psychology, or the practice of medicine...