3 ms·
I think it may be hard to point to bad "experiments" of Freud's, since he didn't conduct psychology experiments the way we think of today, i.e. the gold standar
by lukeasrodgers 10y ago
I think it may be hard to point to bad "experiments" of Freud's, since he didn't conduct psychology experiments the way we think of today, i.e. the gold standard being double-blind randomized controlled trials. In part, this is because it's somewhere between difficult and impossible to do this kind of research in a clinical setting. In part, his lack of solid experimentation was due to the immaturity of the field and the difficult of ever doing rigorous experiments in therapeutic psychology; in part, he was just not a great scientist, anyone who argues otherwise is just engaging in apologetics.
I think that calling his brain science "junk" however (which I'm not accusing you of, just repeating your characterization, which is definitely a position some people hold) is a bit uncharitable, partly because in retrospect all of the nascent "brain science" from that time was pretty junky, but also because he was aware and often explicit that his writings were highly theoretical and speculative, e.g. his writings on the death drive, and his writings on politics and civilization were often cases of him just following lines of thought to see where they went. I think some people take Freud too seriously here (though he also sometimes took himself too seriously).