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Outstanding essay on why Freud has faded from his ultimate cultural and scientific pedestal -- and why and other grand theorists are not relevant today. I agree
by rgejman 10y ago
Outstanding essay on why Freud has faded from his ultimate cultural and scientific pedestal -- and why and other grand theorists are not relevant today.
I agree with the author that "The grand theories of an earlier age offered us an ability to look at the intersections between the self, society, and history; in comparison, their replacements look not just intellectually meek but politically unpromising."
On the other hand, the potency of well defined, minimal theories is unarguable.
- toasterlovin 10y agoOn the contrary, the theories of Freud, Jung, etc. may strive to place the study of human psychology into a larger context, but it is evolutionary psychology that actually accomplishes this task. Right now, the field of psychology is replacing phrenology and faith healing with biochemistry. And, you know what, good riddance!
- jhanschoo 10y agoIn some sense, the lack of grandeur in present research comes from academia realizing just how complex psychological nature is. Freud's era was one that underestimated the complexities of analysing, well, complex systems, where phenomena arise not out of the interactions of more-or-less pure entities like in Newtonian physics, but as the chaotic aggregation of heterogeneous subsystems, like what we now understand many biological processes to be. I think the field today is doing what mathematics had been doing a couple ago; back then mathematicians realized that calculus was on shaky foundation, and developed tools to set mathematics on a firm logical and set theory foundation. Likewise, psychology is investigating neurology and trying to find a firm foundation in it.