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You may disagree, but I'm more in line with publications such as this: Frank Tallis, We should still pick up the pearls: on the scientific status of Freud, Bra

by rendx 1y ago

You may disagree, but I'm more in line with publications such as this: Frank Tallis, We should still pick up the pearls: on the scientific status of Freud, Brain, Volume 147, Issue 4, April 2024, Pages 1115–1117, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awad414 https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awad414 "We do not think of Galileo as being a bad scientist because he cast horoscopes. Rather, we consider him to be an excellent one on account of his mathematics. Similarly, our estimate of Freud’s scientific reputation should not be based on what he got wrong—or for that matter, whether his putative affair with his sister-in-law proves that he was a congenital liar—but rather, what he got right. Militant ‘Freud bashing’ has favoured a style of argument that lacks nuance, and sometimes, integrity." The theories of 100 years of psychoanalysis may not be scientifically proven (nor disproven), but there's plenty of opportunity to do that. There's no need to dismiss any and all ideas coming from that space outright based on some generalization around specific people or their individual-centric approach and reasoning. "The answer to the question of whether psychoanalysis is ‘scientific’—or not—is less clear than is commonly supposed. Popper’s assertion that psychoanalysis does not meet the falsification criterion, which is often automatically accepted as an incontestable truth, hasn’t prevented ‘scientifically minded’ researchers testing psychoanalytic hypotheses experimentally." I strongly disagree with your statement that psychological disorders are distinct in terms of etiology. That's just not true, and frankly, unscientific to make up such a claim. To provide some citations: "The reliability and validity of traditional taxonomies are limited by arbitrary boundaries between psychopathology and normality, often unclear boundaries between disorders, frequent disorder co-occurrence, heterogeneity within disorders, and diagnostic instability." Kotov, R., Krueger, R. F., Watson, D., Achenbach, T. M., Althoff, R. R., Bagby, R. M., Brown, T. A., Carpenter, W. T., Caspi, A., Clark, L. A., Eaton, N. R., Forbes, M. K., Hyman, S. E., Jonas, K. G., Latzman, R. D., Li, J. J., Nelson, B. D., Regier, D. A., Rodriguez-Seijas, C., Ruggero, C. J., … Wilson, S. (2017). The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A dimensional alternative to traditional nosologies. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(4), 454-477. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000258 https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000258 "Mental disorders traditionally have been viewed as distinct, episodic, and categorical conditions. This view has been challenged by evidence that many disorders are sequentially comorbid, recurrent/chronic, and exist on a continuum." Caspi, A., Houts, R. M., Belsky, D. W., Goldman-Mellor, S. J., Harrington, H., Israel, S., Meier, M. H., Ramrakha, S., Shalev, I., Poulton, R., & Moffitt, T. E. (2014). The p factor: One general psychopathology factor in the structure of psychiatric disorders? Clinical Psychological Science, 2(2), 119-137. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702613497473 https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702613497473

ants_everywhere 1y ago
I think we're coming at this from different point of views and possibly different backgrounds. My perspective is that ideas need to earn their keep. You have said a few times that I'm "dismissing" ideas, whereas the way science works is that you have to make a case for why your idea should be valued. Tallis is a clinical psychologist and as I mentioned the clinical (which above I called applied but really I mostly meant clinical) psychologists have been trying to revive Freud for a long time. Tallis is also an author and as even he points out Freud is studied more in literature than in psychology. So yes there is a whole literature of clinical psychologists trying to revive Freud's reputation, and it goes back decades and possibly centuries. I have no problem with you agreeing that literature, but I do want to point out that I already indicated above that it existed. But clinical psychologists are not trained in research, which is the branch of psychology that conducts the science. So they usually don't have the background to understand whether his contributions count as scientific research. The article also makes at least one factual mistake -- Koller discovered the anesthetic properties of cocaine, Freud did not suggest them. It doesn't seem to make a case for any science Freud did. Galileo is a good scientist because he did science. We don't include his horoscopes as science. Same with Newton and his alchemy. Freud has just the horoscopes and alchemy so he hasn't achieved the same status. Most of what people typically say they value in Freud predates him by thinkers whose reputation is stronger. The idea that the mind does a great deal of unconscious work goes back to the 1700s with people like Kant and Hume in philosophy. William James started writing about the unconscious mind in 1890, a few years before Freud. Ramón y Cajal was doing his neuroscience work around the same time as Freud. We sometimes think of Freud as one of the first psychologists and as inventing some famous concepts like the unconscious. But that's not actually true. There were other psychologists who predated him or were working at the same time who are considered today to have made lasting empirical contributions in a way that Freud hasn't. So it's not about his being early it's about the way he chose to go about things. > their individual-centric approach and reasoning I'm not sure what you mean here, but if by individual-centric approach you mean case studies, then yes this is very relevant. An individual experience is an anecdote or one datum. You need to systematically study lots of data. Freud dealt in case reports, so units of individual anecdotes. There's not enough information and not enough systematization to extract useful signal from the noise. > I strongly disagree with your statement that psychological disorders are distinct in terms of etiology. That's just not true, and frankly, unscientific to make up such a claim. Under your view, how would you explain why the disorders have different rates of heritability, different genetic markers, different fMRI patterns, and different treatments?

by rendx 1y ago

ants_everywhere 1y ago

I think we're coming at this from different point of views and possibly different backgrounds. My perspective is that ideas need to earn their keep. You have said a few times that I'm "dismissing" ideas, whereas the way science works is that you have to make a case for why your idea should be valued. Tallis is a clinical psychologist and as I mentioned the clinical (which above I called applied but really I mostly meant clinical) psychologists have been trying to revive Freud for a long time. Tallis is also an author and as even he points out Freud is studied more in literature than in psychology. So yes there is a whole literature of clinical psychologists trying to revive Freud's reputation, and it goes back decades and possibly centuries. I have no problem with you agreeing that literature, but I do want to point out that I already indicated above that it existed. But clinical psychologists are not trained in research, which is the branch of psychology that conducts the science. So they usually don't have the background to understand whether his contributions count as scientific research. The article also makes at least one factual mistake -- Koller discovered the anesthetic properties of cocaine, Freud did not suggest them. It doesn't seem to make a case for any science Freud did. Galileo is a good scientist because he did science. We don't include his horoscopes as science. Same with Newton and his alchemy. Freud has just the horoscopes and alchemy so he hasn't achieved the same status. Most of what people typically say they value in Freud predates him by thinkers whose reputation is stronger. The idea that the mind does a great deal of unconscious work goes back to the 1700s with people like Kant and Hume in philosophy. William James started writing about the unconscious mind in 1890, a few years before Freud. Ramón y Cajal was doing his neuroscience work around the same time as Freud. We sometimes think of Freud as one of the first psychologists and as inventing some famous concepts like the unconscious. But that's not actually true. There were other psychologists who predated him or were working at the same time who are considered today to have made lasting empirical contributions in a way that Freud hasn't. So it's not about his being early it's about the way he chose to go about things. > their individual-centric approach and reasoning I'm not sure what you mean here, but if by individual-centric approach you mean case studies, then yes this is very relevant. An individual experience is an anecdote or one datum. You need to systematically study lots of data. Freud dealt in case reports, so units of individual anecdotes. There's not enough information and not enough systematization to extract useful signal from the noise. > I strongly disagree with your statement that psychological disorders are distinct in terms of etiology. That's just not true, and frankly, unscientific to make up such a claim. Under your view, how would you explain why the disorders have different rates of heritability, different genetic markers, different fMRI patterns, and different treatments?