Bijou Drains
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The point, TM, is not that you didn’t experience them, and not to diminish them, or the books you read, but that to generalise them wildly, assume that they are universal, that they can be fitted into and explained by the bizarre fever dream that Freud created and that then think that this “theoretical system” is worthy of lengthy discussion, is beyond belief.
As to my offensiveness, I wasn’t attempting to offend you I was giving you an earthy critique of this type of methodology, not you personally.
I could of course claim that my offensiveness is due to unresolved conflicts during my analysis stage, or that I was frightened by a horse’s undercarriage when I was in the pram. Alternatively I could argue that the fact that I made an offensive remark to you wasn’t my choice and that any free choice I had in the matter is actually just an illusion of free will.
Personally I’d prefer to just take ownership and responsibility for it, explain that I was frustrated by the fact that intelligent people like you continue to invest in the ideas of a fraud like Sigmund and that this frustration leads me at time to be offensive. To that end if I have offended, I do honestly apologise.
I would also suggest that you read up on Attachment Theory, at least a little. Having gained a little knowledge of your early life, as shared on this board, I would, with genuine respect, suggest attachment theory may actually give you interesting insights into how we make and maintain affectional relationships.
TM – so basically you have read a few novels and remember it yourself.
The point I’m making is that to use evidence such as that to create a whole system of child developmental framework and stage posting, to use it as a basis for alleged therapeutic intervention, to explain the behaviours of vast tracts of child and adult behaviour. Is, if you pardon my French, as weak as piss.
Wez,
I responded with a very long post which didn’t come onto the board. I have put a few other bits on.
I thought my posting might come on but it hasn’t.
I will recreate the post but I’m a bit tied up at the moment work wise so it may take me a few days to clear my desk and get back to you.
TM – “They have romantic feelings and fantasies which we know are sexual, as Freud knew, without any adult interference or abuse, long before they know anything about the sexual act, and without requiring genital focus.”
How do you know this, what research supports this? (by the way I strongly suggest you
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DO NOT
carry out a google search using these terms!!!)
This is the Freudian methodology, take an observation (children sometimes play with their genitals) and then build an unsupported anecdotal theory based on their own inferences regarding intra psychic processes (thinking, feeling, fantasies, etc.) which by definition you do not have access to. You cannot say with any form of certainty what anyone else is thinking, feeling or fantasising about, it is all supposition. Every part of what you have written is based on your own suppositions, and inferences. Have you interviewed children to find out what their fantasies are? Have you carried out longitudinal studies of children’s behaviours and what children report about their behaviours. I fear the answer is no. Just the usual unsupported inferences. And on the basis of these unsupported inferences, Freud created a whole edifice of the ridiculous psycho sexual stages model and then the Oedipus and Electra complexes, all built to fit in with the fashion at the time of Ancient Greek Drama revivals. It is known that Freud attended performances of Oedipus Rex in Paris and Vienna, which received rapturous receptions. You can never accuse Freud of missing out on jumping on a bandwagon when one came his way.
What is amazing that grown up socialists are still falling from the hog wash that Freud sold. The bourgeois writings of a theory that fitted in beautifully with the ideas of the ruling class of the time. Psychodynamic theory is based on the idea that humans are in mental turmoil at all times, that they are in conflict from the moment of birth, ignoring the huge weight of evidence that human beings are cooperative and harmonious most of the time. Millions upon millions of people live cooperatively and supportive despite the conditions we live in.
Can I suggest it is time for you, TM and Wez, to cast aside Freud’s Victorian Penny Dreadful fantasies and update your knowledge with theoretical perspectives that actually fit more closely with the real nature of the human condition, which recognise that human beings, and in fact nearly all mammals are evolved to seek out nurture and to offer nature to our offspring. Theories which has support from long term studies, that recognise that children’s lives and experiences are not limited to idle speculation about the existence or non existence of childhood sexual fantasy and which continue to be supported by on going studies on neurological examination of the human brain via MRI, CT scans, etc. evolutionary theory, etc.
Can I suggest you start by learning the basics of Attachment Theory, (maybe start by browsing through Bowlby’s ground breaking work “The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds”), if you want to try and understand some of the interactions we have with each other you may also learn a little more about Transactional Analysis (Try Berne’s “What do You Say After You Say Hello” and if you have any really desire to look at psychology, development, psychiatry from a radical point of you read through the work of Berne’s collaborator Claude Steiner.
I wrote rather a long reply to Wez’s post 266529. When I posted it it disappeared and didn’t come onto the message board. This has happened before and then the message has finally come on. It may be that it has been somehow filtered out as it makes some comments about TM’s strange discussion about what little lads may or might do around the age of 5 years old. I’d appreciate if the Mods could have a quick check to see if they have any idea where the post went.
Rather than repeat the who thing at this point in time, I would make the point about Wez’s point about Freud’s early seduction theory (Verführungstheorie) which was developed in the mid-1890s hypothesis proposing that hysteria and obsessional neurosis were caused by repressed memories of early childhood sexual abuse. I have kind of alluded to this to already. As Freud revised this theory (which clearly now seems to actually to hold at least some water) with his psychosexual stages theory it leads to several questions. Did Freud move on from his original theory and develop a theory which put the possible sexual abusers in the clear (and provided a get out clause for generations of abusers) because of genuine dissatisfaction with his original hypothesis or did he do this because he realised that his original theory put him directly in the line of sight of his paymasters, threatening his burgeoning career, financial well being and future career. If, as I suspect, that this was due to the latter, not only does that make him an intellectual fraud, it also makes him a moral coward.
Regardless of this, it does give even greater proof that his whole sections of his theoretical system, predicated on the psycho sexual stages are built on foundations of sand.
Rejecting Freud is not necessarily rejecting psychoanalysis. The term psychoanalysis, in modern usage, is now often used to signify a range of approach that analyses the mind (psyche).
Again rejecting Freud does not mean rejecting psychotherapeutic approaches. There are many much more sophisticated and well researched approaches to psychotherapy and counselling that do not rely on Freud’s mumbo jumbo.
Similarly I do not reject talking therapy, I have undertaken a great deal of professional training, study and qualification in talking therapies and counselling.
Claiming that rejection of any attempt to reject Freud is in any way saying there is nothing to be gained in examining the function of the mind, is like saying you aren’t interested in medicine, disease or epidemiology, just because you reject the theory of miasma.
As to comparing criticism of Freud to Bolshevik practice is beyond satire. Freud and his followers required a slavish devotion to the dogma of the great mind, Sigmund. Many noted psychologists have made comparisons to Freud and his followers to cult like behaviour. Any criticism of the dogma resulted in rejection, expulsion and virulent criticism by him and his followers.
Jung, Berne, Bowlby are just a few that faced the wrath of the cult.
The theoretical work of people like Bowlby, Rutter, Sagi, Berne, Claude Steiner, Mary Ainsworth, Erik Erikson, Fritz Perls, etc. are far more worthy of attention than Freud’s quasi mystical musings.
To suggest that Freud made one or two obvious errors, is a bit like saying “well the captain of the Titanic may have made the odd navigational error”.
To be fair to Freud, he was pretty early on the scene. Although you could argue that Mezmer and Breuer were there first. He made use of the concept of the unconscious mind, but he was by no means the first. He was however a good publicist.
I would also say that his whole psychosexual stages theory, was not only wrong it has been has been very harmful.
To me, the whole concept of infantile sexual drives is very concerning. Without going into great detail, the number of perpetrators of sexual abuse I’ve come across who have claimed it was the child’s fault, or that children “enjoy” the abuse is pretty high. Over many decades Freud’s theories have led to many children’s disclosures being ignored or considered to be either part of the Oedipus or Electra complex.
It does possibly lead you to wonder why Freud developed these theories in this way. What kind of mind would early infant and child exploratory behaviour into a system of infantile sexual drives?
Could it be that rather than being the child’s fantasy but that of the Austrian Doctor who was making the observations?
Could it be that the whole Freudian system had its genesis in Freud’s attempt to deal with his own issues rather than those of the children he treated?
To use Freud’s own concept of Ego Defence Mechanism, could it be that he used projection to project into the children his own desires and then used sublimation to channel his ownunacceptable, primal impulses or aggressive drives into socially acceptable, productive, and creative actions. Now there’s a thought!
Just to add a further perspective to my view of Freud:
It lacks empirical scientific grounding and it is a rigid, deterministic model of child development.
it relies on retrospective clinical speculation, rather than a data-driven, biopsychosocial approach. this can be broken down into three main areas of criticism:
1. Linear Developmental Stages & Fixation
Freud’s psychoanalytic model posited that children progress through immutable psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, etc.). Freud argued that if a child experienced trauma or over-gratification during these specific windows, they would become “fixated” or later “regress” to that stage, dictating their adult personality.His rigid stage theory is really a non-starter for developmental science and completely in contrast to all on going research and data driven studies. For example the work of Michael Rutter proved that human development does not follow a single, fragile tracks-and-stages layout. Instead, he proposed a dynamic pathways model. He demonstrated that development is an ongoing, fluid process influenced continuously by an interaction of genetics, environment, and subsequent life events well into adolescence and adulthood.
2. Overemphasis on Internal Fantasy vs. Real-World Discord
Freud’s later theories heavily prioritized a child’s internal unconscious drives, innate aggressive instincts, and intrapsychic fantasies (such as the Oedipus complex) to explain psychological conflict and distress. Wez has himself championed this kind of approach with his posting on ThanatosHowever empirical findings show that environmental factors and tangible family dynamics were far more predictive of behavioural outcomes than abstract internal conflicts. If you read through Rutter’s classic text “Maternal Deprivation Revisited” where he looked closely at issues of maternal separation, Rutter demonstrated that a child’s long-term antisocial behavior or emotional distress was not caused by an abstract psychological fixation or a simple break in a singular maternal bond, but rather by real-world family discord, conflict, and environmental adversity. This fits in very readily with the idealism of Freud v the Materialist concept of history of Marx.
3. Lack of Empirical and Falsifiable Evidence
Freud built his highly complex theoretical structures almost entirely on retrospective case studies of adult patients (such as interpreting a child’s phobia through a speculative lens).Psychoanalytic theory is fundamentally inadequate because it did not hold itself to modern scientific standards, quantitative testing, or replicable data. Theorists in Child development have effectively replaced psychoanalytic dogma with epidemiological data, natural experiments, and genetic research. This even influenced John Bowlby (the pioneer of attachment theory) to distance himself from traditional psychoanalysis, leading him to ultimately concede by 1988 that psychoanalysis was “profoundly incorrect” in its specific theories regarding child development.
As requested by Wez, a posting from the Lacan Thread.
Wez, I’ve read plenty of Freud and had the “pleasure” of working for three years alongside Freudian practitioners in therapeutic settings. I’ve had enough of their psychobabble to last a lifetime. As to their methodology, many thanks for providing an ample example and the opportunity to discuss the kind of illogical and pseudo mystical BS he and his follows like to ceaselessly regurgitate.With your (and others’ indulgence) let’s start to dissect some of the statements from you blog post. This is useful because there are many statements you make that are illustrative of the ways in which Freud and his followers come up with massive generalisations, illogically link phenomenon and come up with quasi religious conclusions based on very little other than their own musings.
For example you state “The child’s relationship with its parents is paradoxical from the start. It needs the mother to satisfy the stimuli for feeding and safety. We know that it also has sensual (infantile sexual) needs as well. When this is expressed in inappropriate behaviour a conflict with the parent is created (because of the moral and educational values of the adult). The child then experiences contradictory needs and is unable to deal successfully with stimuli.” This whole train of thought is predicated on a false assumption, infantile sexuality.
You state that “We know that it also has sensual (infantile sexual) needs as well“. But do we know that? How can you say with certainty that a child has infantile sexual needs? The whole basis of this part of your argument is based on Freud’s assumption that infant behaviour is stylised by the child having sexual desires towards one or both of its parents. What evidence is there for this assumption? Have you asked the infant? I think you’ll find that the infant won’t give a particularly coherent response. If, the behaviour being observed is not based on infantile sexual drives in its nature, then the whole idea that the child is in conflict with its parent falls. Is it not more likely that the sexualised behaviour of children and young people towards their parents that Freud observed were a result of sexual abuse in the children’s childhoods? I have worked alongside many children who have been subject to early years sexual abuse and highly sexualised behaviours in those children is a well known and consistently reported phenomenon. The whole “infantile sexuality” appears with modern eyes as being based on a misunderstanding of child behaviour and a confusion between cause and effect.
Next let’s talk about spiders. You try to link the idea of sex and the “death instinct” into the behaviour of some insects where the female eats the male after mating. In the weird and wonderful world of the Freudian this demonstrates that the urge to reproduce coming into conflict with the urge to survive. However a closer examination shows that this is nonsense. Does the male spider put themselves in a known position of danger because the drive to get his leg over (or maybe all eight of them) overcomes the danger he faces? That assumes that the spider has the cognitive ability to recognise that mating is a dangerous thing. Given that mating is a once and only pleasure, how on earth would the spider be able to recognise the danger and recognise that his mate is going to eat him and then become conflicted by the possible outcomes?
Moving on, what about your statement “some have believed that human sexuality lies at the root of irrational human behaviour. How else are we to explain why his theory of history is so successful in all areas except the most important one – the prediction of a socialist revolution?“. Well, yes, a small number of people do think that human sexuality lies at the root of irrational human behaviour, but they are very, very small in number. If you look at the work of Ellis, Beck, and many other psychologists, the development of irrational thought is viewed by many as being far more complex than the simplistic Freudian notions you appear to be alluding to. Are irrational thoughts (let’s face it irrational behaviour is a consequence of irrational thoughts) genuinely rooted in human sexuality? Let’s look at the irrational thoughts that are triggered by post traumatic stress disorder. Are these irrational thoughts caused by human sexuality? What evidence at all do you have to support the statement that you have made?
As another example, superstitions of all kinds tend to be irrational in nature, are all superstitions rooted in human sexuality? My brother Patrick had a phobia of giraffes when he was little, it was brought on by the fact that he misheard my mother when she used to say, “shut the back door and keep the draft out”, thinking she had said Giraffe instead of draft. No doubt Freud and his follows would have concocted some tale where our Paddy had been somehow frightened at some point by viewing a giraffe’s undercarriage and become concerned that a bloody big spider was going to eat him after having had sex with him!
However your approach (a familiarly Freudian approach), is to put all of this clearly unsupported dogma into a huge generalisation “How else are we to explain why his theory of history is so successful in all areas except the most important one – the prediction of a socialist revolution?“.
How else indeed, well I can think off the top of my head about half a dozen explanations which don’t involve human sexuality being at the root of irrational behaviour. How about Marx being over optimistic? How about Marx not being able to predict that rather than the workforce coming together in greater and greater numbers, that new technology would actually start to separate workers from each other and reduce the nature of collective action? How about the fact that premature mistaken revolutions such as the Bolshevik revolution would provide the perfect propaganda tool for capitalism? How about the fact that the capitalist has developed far more sophisticated propaganda mechanisms than Marx foresaw? How about the fact that political and social reforms have provided some degree of short term relief for workers at times of crisis?
No, no, no!!!! Cast these kinds of practical, historic, factual based thoughts aside, “how else could we explain” the failure of Marx’s predication of a socialist revolution but by the irrational thoughts of the workers regarding capitalism, but by those thoughts being rooted in human sexuality. What a load of baloney.
And then the final, Freudian, crowning achievement, “the death instinct” is linked to sex and satiation of appetite. You state that after a meal, or following sex we achieve a status of satisfaction, of contentment and emotional calm and somehow cognitively every last one of us link those experiences to being dead! We say to ourselves after a good feed or an enjoyable shag, “this must be like being dead”. However, this is not an occasional thought that some of us bizarrely have, as you say it’s an instinct (Thantos) it is there for all of us, hanging over us just waiting to emerge (just quite how evolution which is based on survival and reproduction has achieved this instinct is never explained, or what use it is in the quest for survival or reproduction). I must be quite strange, when I contemplate death (we all do at some stage), I have never once thought to myself “I suppose dying will be a bit like having a nice meal or a satisfying roll in the hay”.
You go on to state “No organism can survive without simulating death.” That’s not true, though is it? You can watch a mussel as long as you like, you wont see it simulating death, I had a cat for nearly 20 years, he never simulated death even once. Yet another huge unsupported and factually incorrect statement, just like the whole edifice of Freudianism it is built on foundations of sand.
So to finally prove the fairytale nature of your musings, you tell us that somehow there is a “longing of the animate entity to return to its inanimate origins?”, yet practically the whole of religious mythology is built upon the idea that religious faith will somehow provide some form of eternal life. How is it then that religions have thrived for millennia whilst being based upon a belief that you think is contradictory to the internal longings of the animate to return to the inanimate.
If you want to believe all of this undiluted bin juice, it’s up to you, bonny lad, but don’t think that for one moment it provides any kind of insight into the human mind or human behaviour.
Wez, I’ve read plenty of Freud and had the “pleasure” of working for three years alongside Freudian practitioners in therapeutic settings. I’ve had enough of their psychobabble to last a lifetime. As to their methodology, many thanks for providing an ample example and the opportunity to discuss the kind of illogical and pseudo mystical BS he and his follows like to ceaselessly regurgitate.
With your (and others’ indulgence) let’s start to dissect some of the statements from you blog post. This is useful because there are many statements you make that are illustrative of the ways in which Freud and his followers come up with massive generalisations, illogically link phenomenon and come up with quasi religious conclusions based on very little other than their own musings.
For example you state “The child’s relationship with its parents is paradoxical from the start. It needs the mother to satisfy the stimuli for feeding and safety. We know that it also has sensual (infantile sexual) needs as well. When this is expressed in inappropriate behaviour a conflict with the parent is created (because of the moral and educational values of the adult). The child then experiences contradictory needs and is unable to deal successfully with stimuli.” This whole train of thought is predicated on a false assumption, infantile sexuality.
You state that “We know that it also has sensual (infantile sexual) needs as well“. But do we know that? How can you say with certainty that a child has infantile sexual needs? The whole basis of this part of your argument is based on Freud’s assumption that infant behaviour is stylised by the child having sexual desires towards one or both of its parents. What evidence is there for this assumption? Have you asked the infant? I think you’ll find that the infant won’t give a particularly coherent response. If, the behaviour being observed is not based on infantile sexual drives in its nature, then the whole idea that the child is in conflict with its parent falls. Is it not more likely that the sexualised behaviour of children and young people towards their parents that Freud observed were a result of sexual abuse in the children’s childhoods? I have worked alongside many children who have been subject to early years sexual abuse and highly sexualised behaviours in those children is a well known and consistently reported phenomenon. The whole “infantile sexuality” appears with modern eyes as being based on a misunderstanding of child behaviour and a confusion between cause and effect.
Next let’s talk about spiders. You try to link the idea of sex and the “death instinct” into the behaviour of some insects where the female eats the male after mating. In the weird and wonderful world of the Freudian this demonstrates that the urge to reproduce coming into conflict with the urge to survive. However a closer examination shows that this is nonsense. Does the male spider put themselves in a known position of danger because the drive to get his leg over (or maybe all eight of them) overcomes the danger he faces? That assumes that the spider has the cognitive ability to recognise that mating is a dangerous thing. Given that mating is a once and only pleasure, how on earth would the spider be able to recognise the danger and recognise that his mate is going to eat him and then become conflicted by the possible outcomes?
Moving on, what about your statement “some have believed that human sexuality lies at the root of irrational human behaviour. How else are we to explain why his theory of history is so successful in all areas except the most important one – the prediction of a socialist revolution?“. Well, yes, a small number of people do think that human sexuality lies at the root of irrational human behaviour, but they are very, very small in number. If you look at the work of Ellis, Beck, and many other psychologists, the development of irrational thought is viewed by many as being far more complex than the simplistic Freudian notions you appear to be alluding to. Are irrational thoughts (let’s face it irrational behaviour is a consequence of irrational thoughts) genuinely rooted in human sexuality? Let’s look at the irrational thoughts that are triggered by post traumatic stress disorder. Are these irrational thoughts caused by human sexuality? What evidence at all do you have to support the statement that you have made?
As another example, superstitions of all kinds tend to be irrational in nature, are all superstitions rooted in human sexuality? My brother Patrick had a phobia of giraffes when he was little, it was brought on by the fact that he misheard my mother when she used to say, “shut the back door and keep the draft out”, thinking she had said Giraffe instead of draft. No doubt Freud and his follows would have concocted some tale where our Paddy had been somehow frightened at some point by viewing a giraffe’s undercarriage and become concerned that a bloody big spider was going to eat him after having had sex with him!
However your approach (a familiarly Freudian approach), is to put all of this clearly unsupported dogma into a huge generalisation “How else are we to explain why his theory of history is so successful in all areas except the most important one – the prediction of a socialist revolution?“.
How else indeed, well I can think off the top of my head about half a dozen explanations which don’t involve human sexuality being at the root of irrational behaviour. How about Marx being over optimistic? How about Marx not being able to predict that rather than the workforce coming together in greater and greater numbers, that new technology would actually start to separate workers from each other and reduce the nature of collective action? How about the fact that premature mistaken revolutions such as the Bolshevik revolution would provide the perfect propaganda tool for capitalism? How about the fact that the capitalist has developed far more sophisticated propaganda mechanisms than Marx foresaw? How about the fact that political and social reforms have provided some degree of short term relief for workers at times of crisis?
No, no, no!!!! Cast these kinds of practical, historic, factual based thoughts aside, “how else could we explain” the failure of Marx’s predication of a socialist revolution but by the irrational thoughts of the workers regarding capitalism, but by those thoughts being rooted in human sexuality. What a load of baloney.
And then the final, Freudian, crowning achievement, “the death instinct” is linked to sex and satiation of appetite. You state that after a meal, or following sex we achieve a status of satisfaction, of contentment and emotional calm and somehow cognitively every last one of us link those experiences to being dead! We say to ourselves after a good feed or an enjoyable shag, “this must be like being dead”. However, this is not an occasional thought that some of us bizarrely have, as you say it’s an instinct (Thantos) it is there for all of us, hanging over us just waiting to emerge (just quite how evolution which is based on survival and reproduction has achieved this instinct is never explained, or what use it is in the quest for survival or reproduction). I must be quite strange, when I contemplate death (we all do at some stage), I have never once thought to myself “I suppose dying will be a bit like having a nice meal or a satisfying roll in the hay”.
You go on to state “No organism can survive without simulating death.” That’s not true, though is it? You can watch a mussel as long as you like, you wont see it simulating death, I had a cat for nearly 20 years, he never simulated death even once. Yet another huge unsupported and factually incorrect statement, just like the whole edifice of Freudianism it is built on foundations of sand.
So to finally prove the fairytale nature of your musings, you tell us that somehow there is a “longing of the animate entity to return to its inanimate origins?”, yet practically the whole of religious mythology is built upon the idea that religious faith will somehow provide some form of eternal life. How is it then that religions have thrived for millennia whilst being based upon a belief that you think is contradictory to the internal longings of the animate to return to the inanimate.
If you want to believe all of this undiluted bin juice, it’s up to you, bonny lad, but don’t think that for one moment it provides any kind of insight into the human mind or human behaviour.
Wez – “ You used the word ‘ridiculous’ twice in one sentence to ‘ridicule’ Freud which would interest any psychologist”
I can point you in the direction of many, many of the lots of psychologists I know that wouldn’t find anything interesting at all about me using the term ridiculous at all interesting, they would find it a commonplace.
Back in the real world most serious students of human psychology look in Freud as an interesting historical artefact in the development of more cohesive understanding of the human mind or human behaviour.
What is interesting, however, is your response, which implies that any questioning of Freud’s any part of his dogma is suspicious, any critical thought is to be treated as unworthy. All of the hallmarks of a cult.
What’s also even more interesting is the unsupported and demonstrably false and universal nature of your statement. That is to say, you stated that “any psychologist” would find my use of the term “ridiculous” interesting. Just like your hero, Freud, you have stated a matter of opinion, as a matter of fact.
Examining your words more closely, you stated that all psychologists would find my use of the term “ridiculous” interesting.
What evidence do you have to support this universal statement? Have you surveyed all psychologists? Have you even surveyed a representative group of psychologists to arrive at your conclusions? No, just like Siggy, you’ve used his methodology, if in doubt, just make shit up that suits your particular narrative and to hell with any supportive evidence.
The fact of the matter is that, similarly, Freud’s ideas don’t hold water when put against any form of forensic examination.
The idea that all (every single one of them!), young boys see their sisters naked and assume that they have had their genitalia chopped off by their fathers and as a result associate themselves with their father to avoid the same fate is beyond ridicule.
Even if we swallow that nonsense for those who have seen female genitalia, what about about children who don’t have female siblings, what about single parents?
And that’s just one of Freud’s ludicrous theories
As to the idea that somewhere humans have through the process of evolution (a process which is based on the idea of physical survival) have somehow developed a drive that leads us to kill ourselves is possibly even more risible.
Fair play if you enjoy that wizards and warlocks nonsense, set yourself away, but linking it to the ideas of scientific socialism is a step too far.
The difference between Marx and Freud is the level of research and support.
Marx’s work was meticulously researched, you only need to have a quick glance at Capital and you can see the high level of quantitative and qualitative research Marx used to support the theoretical conclusions he came to.
Compare that to the “little Hans” case study. Half a dozen letters resulting in the ridiculous conclusions Freud came to. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
Wez, given that you hold being rejected by the scientific establishment as a badge of honour, can I assume that as the scientific establishment reflect the idea of transubstantiation, that you truly believe that the host is transformed into the body and blood of Christ during the mass?
It is important to distinguish between psychoanalytical approaches and psychodynamic approaches.
Psychoanalytic approaches are usually used to refer specifically to the earliest forms of psychotherapy, practiced by Freud and his immediate followers, and psychodynamic approaches are those that are informed by psychoanalytic theory, but diverges from the traditional practice model.
Although it is recognised that early childhood experiences form a huge part in the development of cognitions, emotions, physical growth, the immune system and general personality, these developments are now understood to be being far more complex, nuanced and individual that the fanciful, unscientific, poorly evidenced fairy stories that Freud came up with.
Books by Freud are probably best stored alongside those of JK Rowlings, Tolkien and CS Lewis.
I was using the term human being as a synonym for the animal Homo Sapien (or what sometimes referred to as Homo Sapien Sapien in older texts).
The point I was making about the development of emotional attachment refers to all mammals not just placental mammals, so marsupial and monotremata. That’s why it’s called Mammalian Attachment
