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>Questioning the spear’s phallic, murderous logic, How many more years before the ideas of Freud are so removed from common usage that we no longer have to dea

>Questioning the spear’s phallic, murderous logic, How many more years before the ideas of Freud are so removed from common usage that we no longer have to deal with their detritus. I figure another 20-30. on edit: maybe irritating me more than normal as I recently listened to a podcast where it was all about how, despite nobody believing Freud anymore, he was just so important and central that all ideas related to his incorrect ideas.

renewiltord 3y ago
It's quite interesting how much weight humans give to old ideas. Probably a Lindy heuristic. But, man, imagine if I was early to that field and made it so that we had to conceive of all doors as being vaginal (constant testaments to women's obsession with their genitals). Do women like putting things in the trash bin because they have penis envy and want to experience putting a sword in a sheath, so to speak? Why do wives like tidying up? Is it because they like putting things in cubbies, simulating the sex experience? Wholesale trash thought. Man, even a mildly intelligent teenager has surpassed this level of free-association. But the age of the concept and its Barnum effect explanatory behaviour makes it the home of every mediocre mind. The only risk, I suppose, is that if we end this obvious sign, we remove a clear signal of sophomoric thought.
- lfmunoz4 3y ago
  You can't prove it either way, people are complex and who is to say what sort of associations people have or used to have inside their head. The simple fact is that when Freud was coming out with his ideas they were new they were original. Most of anything we read is recycled. Having a single original idea is incredible and he had many that maybe wrong but eventually did lead to some right ideas.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Oh, indeed, I am a big fan of people being wrong in novel ways that open up new ways of thought. Much of the old philosophers is really their exploration of the space. Searching means looking in the wrong place most of the time. My problem is with those who came after and keep looking in some old place where there is nothing left to find.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
There are layers upon layers in culture when it comes to Freud. Freud was fashionable beyond the reality of his importance, they said. Then the "Freud as misinderstood" revisionists ruled, for a while. Then it was fashionable to discredit and mock Freud. He became the epitome of all that's "unscientific". Then the neo-Freudians came along and was fashionable to denounce the rigid, autistic positivists who so loudly mocked Freud. And so it goes. Meanwhile his nephew Edward Bernays totally transformed Western culture into what we see today... a fantasy driven garden of individual Utopian projects. And if you bracket the crazy penis-envy unconscious analysis stuff aside, then "Civilisation and Its Discontents" remains one of the most prescient discourses on our current condition ever written [0]. There's one great test that a thinker is not irrelevant... that people are still talking about them 100 years later. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Disconten...
deleted 3y ago
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mitthrowaway2 3y ago
I agree it's annoying, but isn't Shakespeare full of that sort of thing too?
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  I'd thought Shakespeare was full of country matters: agricultural stuff like Caesar plowing and Cleopatra cropping.
mcguire 3y ago
Freud may be silly, but the standing (ahem) of the phallus in human culture is pretty high. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/11000-year-old-statue-of-giant-man-clutching-penis-unearthed-in-turkey https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/11000-year-old-statu...
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  sure, but basically the belief in Freudianism as being a scientifically accurate truth prevalent in the 20th century led to all sorts of these silly phallic metaphors. I remember one that I read when I was a teen - intro to soft science book supposed that rockets were phallic in shape because man wished to rape outer space. So every now and then I'm thinking finally done with that codswallop and suddenly it jumps out at you from an unexpected place.

renewiltord 3y ago

It's quite interesting how much weight humans give to old ideas. Probably a Lindy heuristic. But, man, imagine if I was early to that field and made it so that we had to conceive of all doors as being vaginal (constant testaments to women's obsession with their genitals). Do women like putting things in the trash bin because they have penis envy and want to experience putting a sword in a sheath, so to speak? Why do wives like tidying up? Is it because they like putting things in cubbies, simulating the sex experience? Wholesale trash thought. Man, even a mildly intelligent teenager has surpassed this level of free-association. But the age of the concept and its Barnum effect explanatory behaviour makes it the home of every mediocre mind. The only risk, I suppose, is that if we end this obvious sign, we remove a clear signal of sophomoric thought.

lfmunoz4 3y ago
You can't prove it either way, people are complex and who is to say what sort of associations people have or used to have inside their head. The simple fact is that when Freud was coming out with his ideas they were new they were original. Most of anything we read is recycled. Having a single original idea is incredible and he had many that maybe wrong but eventually did lead to some right ideas.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Oh, indeed, I am a big fan of people being wrong in novel ways that open up new ways of thought. Much of the old philosophers is really their exploration of the space. Searching means looking in the wrong place most of the time. My problem is with those who came after and keep looking in some old place where there is nothing left to find.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

There are layers upon layers in culture when it comes to Freud. Freud was fashionable beyond the reality of his importance, they said. Then the "Freud as misinderstood" revisionists ruled, for a while. Then it was fashionable to discredit and mock Freud. He became the epitome of all that's "unscientific". Then the neo-Freudians came along and was fashionable to denounce the rigid, autistic positivists who so loudly mocked Freud. And so it goes. Meanwhile his nephew Edward Bernays totally transformed Western culture into what we see today... a fantasy driven garden of individual Utopian projects. And if you bracket the crazy penis-envy unconscious analysis stuff aside, then "Civilisation and Its Discontents" remains one of the most prescient discourses on our current condition ever written [0]. There's one great test that a thinker is not irrelevant... that people are still talking about them 100 years later. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Disconten...

deleted 3y ago

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mitthrowaway2 3y ago

I agree it's annoying, but isn't Shakespeare full of that sort of thing too?

082349872349872 3y ago
I'd thought Shakespeare was full of country matters: agricultural stuff like Caesar plowing and Cleopatra cropping.

mcguire 3y ago

Freud may be silly, but the standing (ahem) of the phallus in human culture is pretty high. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/11000-year-old-statue-of-giant-man-clutching-penis-unearthed-in-turkey https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/11000-year-old-statu...

bryanrasmussen 3y ago
sure, but basically the belief in Freudianism as being a scientifically accurate truth prevalent in the 20th century led to all sorts of these silly phallic metaphors. I remember one that I read when I was a teen - intro to soft science book supposed that rockets were phallic in shape because man wished to rape outer space. So every now and then I'm thinking finally done with that codswallop and suddenly it jumps out at you from an unexpected place.