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I don't agree that it was mostly about ideas, Freud's main insight was to deduce the existence of the subconscious mind: i.e. the idea that we don't have direct

I don't agree that it was mostly about ideas, Freud's main insight was to deduce the existence of the subconscious mind: i.e. the idea that we don't have direct access to our entire inner world. It was a big departure from the way the mind was conceived till then.

droithomme 7y ago
Is current consensus that this "subconscious mind" is an actual thing that exists?
- nabdab 7y ago
  No. Nothing of Freuds is actually testable. He asserts that there is a “conscious mind” and “subconscious mind” but only in concept. You might as well try to build an alternative theory of mechanics based on an assertion that all objects have a conscious and subconscious mass, and that gravity actually act on the subconcious mass and only moves the whole because the two are interconnected.
  - didericis 7y ago
    This seems to be the crux of all of the scientific issues with psychiatry and studies of personal and social behavior more broadly. Strict definitions of what is being measured and ways to go about measuring those things without administrator or self reporting bias don’t seem to exist, or at least they don’t seem to be employed that often. There are clever ways to get around those issues and tie theories about behavior to observed action in the real world, and there are a number of psychological theories that come up with a plausible sounding evolutionary history to certain thoughts and behavior that seem correct, but a lack of good measurement instruments seems to be a very big problem preventing more concrete answers to a lot of different questions about the mind. When talking about things other than motor or perceptual related studies of the mind (bionics related stuff), the most common measurement tool seems to be self reported surveys, and although I think there are tricks you can do when wording questions and statistically analyzing results to try to account for patients trying to answer in ways they feel like they should that aren’t necessarily accurate/make sure people don’t misinterpret questions, that whole way of investigating claims seems to be very very shaky. It’s a common complaint about the field, and I’m sure a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists are sick of hearing it, but I haven’t felt like I’ve ever gotten an adequate response about why it’s not a valid complaint.
  - reverius42 7y ago
    So... dark matter?
  - gerbilly 7y ago
    It's trivially false that we can introspectively observe all of our mental processes. Call it what you will, but there are parts of our minds, whose functioning can be observed but which we don't have access to. It's so trivial to find examples, and it's really fun: describe to me in detail how it feels to hit a baseball, to perceive the colour red. Tell me about the exact moment that you learned the word "squirrel".
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  No citations handy, but there is definitely consensus that the subconscious exists.
- gerbilly 7y ago
  Yes, I'd say he was right in the main points, but wrong in the details. It's trivially true that, while we can observe some of the workings of our mind, we cannot observe all of it. That part that we can't observe can easily be mapped onto his ideas of the unconscious mind.

droithomme 7y ago

Is current consensus that this "subconscious mind" is an actual thing that exists?

nabdab 7y ago
No. Nothing of Freuds is actually testable. He asserts that there is a “conscious mind” and “subconscious mind” but only in concept. You might as well try to build an alternative theory of mechanics based on an assertion that all objects have a conscious and subconscious mass, and that gravity actually act on the subconcious mass and only moves the whole because the two are interconnected.
- didericis 7y ago
  This seems to be the crux of all of the scientific issues with psychiatry and studies of personal and social behavior more broadly. Strict definitions of what is being measured and ways to go about measuring those things without administrator or self reporting bias don’t seem to exist, or at least they don’t seem to be employed that often. There are clever ways to get around those issues and tie theories about behavior to observed action in the real world, and there are a number of psychological theories that come up with a plausible sounding evolutionary history to certain thoughts and behavior that seem correct, but a lack of good measurement instruments seems to be a very big problem preventing more concrete answers to a lot of different questions about the mind. When talking about things other than motor or perceptual related studies of the mind (bionics related stuff), the most common measurement tool seems to be self reported surveys, and although I think there are tricks you can do when wording questions and statistically analyzing results to try to account for patients trying to answer in ways they feel like they should that aren’t necessarily accurate/make sure people don’t misinterpret questions, that whole way of investigating claims seems to be very very shaky. It’s a common complaint about the field, and I’m sure a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists are sick of hearing it, but I haven’t felt like I’ve ever gotten an adequate response about why it’s not a valid complaint.
- reverius42 7y ago
  So... dark matter?
- gerbilly 7y ago
  It's trivially false that we can introspectively observe all of our mental processes. Call it what you will, but there are parts of our minds, whose functioning can be observed but which we don't have access to. It's so trivial to find examples, and it's really fun: describe to me in detail how it feels to hit a baseball, to perceive the colour red. Tell me about the exact moment that you learned the word "squirrel".
chrisweekly 7y ago
No citations handy, but there is definitely consensus that the subconscious exists.
gerbilly 7y ago
Yes, I'd say he was right in the main points, but wrong in the details. It's trivially true that, while we can observe some of the workings of our mind, we cannot observe all of it. That part that we can't observe can easily be mapped onto his ideas of the unconscious mind.