Freud...Genius or Charlatan?

Answer 1

Not a charlatan, just wrong. Compare the "phlogiston" theory of air before oxygen was discovered. Freud's greatest credit is that he was the inventor of psychotherapy. Genuinely good work, real healing, is nowadays being done by practitioners of relationship-based counselling/psychotherapies such as person-centred, Gestalt, psychosynthesis, Transactional Analysis. The developers of these, such as Carl Rogers, Werner Wolff, Assagioli, and Eric Berne, were all responding creatively to their experience that Freudian methods did not work, or were at best unnecessarily slow and expensive. But could they have got there without Freud? He was the pioneer of the very idea that we can revise the inner workings of our minds by an active, intentional process of "therapy".

Answer 2

Charlatan

Answer 3

It's been disputed that Freud, because he was supposedly a homosexual, based much of his findings on the alpha male and not comprehending the true dynamic of the persona. I personally ,having had contact with physicians who have studied his works to no end, have found flaws only to be discarded in conversation as ignorance. Now who's ignorant?

Answer 4

Freud the Genius?
If you are talking about Professor Sigmund Freud, M.D. - he is probably one of the greatest thinkers in his field, in my and other's view.

Unfortunately, English translations of his German writings are wanting in equality, when compared to the originals, since he uses the typical, paragraph-long sentences of the elite European thinkers. His Totem und Tabu alone is eye opening and shows him as a excellent researcher and thinker. By the way, his "id" is but one of the mistranslations, Freud called it "es," which means in English "it."

This is what the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy sais,

"Sigmund Freud, physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist and father of psychoanalysis, is generally recognised as one of the most influential and authoritative thinkers of the twentieth century. ...

Freud elaborated the theory that the mind is a complex energy-system ....

He articulated and refined the concepts of the unconscious, of infantile sexuality, of repression,

and proposed a tri-partite account of the mind's structure, all as part of a radically new conceptual and therapeutic frame of reference for the understanding of human psychological development

and the treatment of abnormal mental conditions.

Notwithstanding the multiple manifestations of psychoanalysis as it exists today, it can in almost all fundamental respects be traced directly back to Freud's original work.

Further, Freud's innovative treatment of human actions, dreams,

and indeed of cultural artefacts as invariably possessing implicit symbolic significance

has proven to be extraordinarily fecund,

and has had massive implications for a wide variety of fields, including anthropology, semiotics, and artistic creativity and appreciation in addition to psychology."

Freud had mentioned "the archetype" by a different term, which later his student, Carl Jung, used in his work, calling it archetype. Yet Jung did not have any proper definition of archetype and used the terms symbol and archetype interchangeably. Freud was much more clear about key terms he used.

Freud emphasized sex since in his time it was tabu to talk about it. This made him less popular in certain circles of his time. Yet, this was not all he talked about, he was a tremendous thinker, concerned with many topics and advancing them tremendously.

It would be nice if you could read some of Freud's work in German or by the help of an adequate translation, you could be amazed!

Thanks for asking.
Cordially,
India.Magica

Answer 5

Neither. More so, the two points are in no way connected. From a professional standpoint, he brought to the public domain views which, though certainly can be challenged, nonetheless did create an active discussion which created something of a basis for progressive thinking. His personal life has been a similar subject of discussion and, indeed for those who look for perfection in philosophical ideals, they will remain disappointed. Frankly, in my view, it is possible to suggest do as I say rather than do as I do.

Answer 6

Neither. His theory is not scientific but he did bring out an important thing in therapy: the fact that not the true heals a person, but what the person believes to be the truth.
I think he was just a step in the evolution of psychology. Not the most important, but the most popular.

Answer 7

Me and my three friends (All in our late 20's) have formed a team to help out our neighborhood. I wear a Jar Jar Binks costume and am the leader. Then there is the guy who wears the Grimace costume, he is the strong man. Then there is the guy who is a convicted sex offender, he wears a trenchcoat like the matrix. And lastly, their is "The Professional", he wears a cardboard Burgerking crown and a fake muscle suit. We walk around town and knock on random doors. When the person answers, I dance and do a Jar Jar quote, then make a loud screech with an air horn. While the person is reeling from the sound, the sex offender confesses that he is a sex offender (as required by his parole). Then the grimace throws some leaves and dirt into the persons house. And lastly, Muscle King plays 'me so horny' on his boombox and we dance. We have done this to hundreds of houses. Are we some kind of kings? I don't know how?

Answer 8

Freud was not a charlatan. he was on to somthing when he talked about id, ego, and super ego, but i have to agmit reading dreams is a lode of poo.

Answer 9

Genius. In the realm of Marx, Mozart, Nietzsche, Comte, Weber, Einstein, ....you get the idea.
HE LAYED DOWN THE FRAMEWORK for modern day psychiatry and psychology! Hippocrates cannot be called a quack just because of his methods his used in the era he lived.

Answer 10

The old question- Freud or fraud? Laing or looney? Adler or addled? Jung or...Oh, it's time for my tablets.