Donald J. Robertson Profile picture
Sep 23, 2020 8 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Freud held back scientific progress in psychotherapy by roughly half a century.
Freud's notion of the unconscious mind was "...the sovereign means for believing what one likes in psychology, and for turning what might become a science into a tumbling-ground for whimsies." - William James
People think "Oh back in the day there wasn't any research." That's wrong. The Soviets were doing research on psychotherapy at the start of the 20th century and so were American behavioural psychologists. Freud and his followers nixed all that because... pseudoscience! :/
When psychotherapy research was getting off the ground, Freud created a sort of personality cult based on the interpretation of his own dreams, and throughout the rest of his life he never conducted a single piece of research to test his theories or the outcome of his techniques.
When I was studying psychoanalysis, we used to say it was just a load of pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo and people would say "That's a bit harsh!" Couple of decades later, though, and most people can now agree with that appraisal! ;) Phew!
I'm going to get a load of replies now from people falsely attributing ideas to Freud and sanitizing them by removing all the original references he actually did introduce to castration anxiety and the Oedipus complex. What's good in Freud isn't new and what's new isn't good.
Freud himself said that the Oedipus Complex was his main theoretical innovation. He recognized that the other stuff about the unconscious was largely derivative of earlier thinkers. But that psychosexual stuff is what everyone now rejects.
I didn't mean to re-ignite the "psychotherapy wars" just think that when his name comes up, periodically, people should remind everyone how serious the flaws are with Freudianism and why it was increasingly debunked by psychologists from the 1950s onwards.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Donald J. Robertson

Donald J. Robertson Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @DonJRobertson

Jun 29, 2023
Last comment about Jordan Peterson, just because I tend to respond to things in my field that are trending on Twitter. (Otherwise nobody new ever reads what you're writing here!)
I really notice that the way his fans talk about him has changed dramatically over time. When he first appeared they would make a big deal out of how he was an "expert" and a prof. of clinical psychology, although he seldom actually wrote about clinical psychology per se.
He would cite scientific studies, which critics found tenuously related to the conclusions he drew from them. (Lobsters anyone?) And his fans would go on about how he allegedly backed up everything he said up with science and logic. (He didn't.)
Read 11 tweets
Mar 17, 2023
Andrew Tate on Stoicism. Just watched a 5 min YouTube video where Andrew Tate is interviewed about Stoicism. I might write a short article about this because, well, it neatly encapsulates an extremely common and very insidious misconception about Stoic philosophy.
Basically, he claims to be into Stoicism and that what he learned from it is that feelings, such as intense rage, are feedback, and that they should be channelled into constructive activities like exercise. That's a very common piece of self-improvement advice found online.
Although it sounds, at first glance, like good advice to many people, it's not what Stoic philosophy teaches, and really runs totally contrary to the essence of Stoicism. IMHO, it's also quite bad psychological advice, for the simple reason that I'll explain below.
Read 12 tweets
Mar 5, 2023
Jordan Peterson preaches a self-improvement doctrine of extreme personal responsibility, clean your room, etc, but he also implicitly encourages his fans to disown responsibility for their negative emotions by blaming them on other people rather than their own underlying beliefs.
It seems very obvious to me that his whole schtick encourages a victim mentality, which seems in total contradiction to what he claims to be teaching. There's virtually no reference, e.g., to the role of beliefs in shaping emotions like anger.
I think that's why, surprisingly, he avoids any mention of cognitive therapy, the leading evidence-based form of psychotherapy, despite being a former professor of clinical psychology himself, and writing extensively about self-help for confidence, anxiety, depression, etc.
Read 6 tweets
Mar 5, 2023
People think that Stoicism is joyless but they're wrong. They're confusing the Greek philosophy called Stoicism with the modern concept of (lowercase) "stoicism", the unemotional coping style. Marcus Aurelius describes the following three sources of happiness in Stoicism...
1. The primary source of happiness (positive emotion) in Stoic philosophy comes from contemplation of our supreme good, which is the concept of moral wisdom or virtue itself, and our capacity for virtue; by clarifying our own values, for instance, we experience deeper happiness.
2. We likewise experience happiness by learning to appreciate the capacity for wisdom and virtue in other people, despite their imperfections, which Marcus Aurelius demonstrates at length in Book One of The Meditations.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 4, 2023
Russell Brand is a good example of precisely what Socrates warned us against. He said that the Sophists gave long speeches, refused to let anyone interrupt them or ask questions, changed the subject, launched into prepared speeches, etc., to avoid justifying their claims.
He frequently raises his voice and shouts over the top of people who are trying to question him or disagree with him, makes dubious assertions, and then goes off at tangents to avoid answering questions about them, worse, actually than most politicians.
I think regardless of what the guy is saying, it's pretty easy to show that he's using rhetoric in a way that resembles the ancient Sophists, e.g., it's an objective fact that he often talks over other people, and changes the subject to avoid questions, etc.
Read 7 tweets
Mar 3, 2023
Q: Would you consider it hypocritical for someone to pay a ghostwriter to write a self-help book on #Stoicism, so they can pretend they wrote it themselves and publish it under their own name?
I think I've been asked about this maybe three times now. It's not something I would ever agree to do personally. I don't think it's a big deal for a celebrity to have their memoirs ghostwritten but Stoic philosophy is an ethical system that is supposed to value truth.
I was asked once to write Stoic content for a famous influencer, which they wanted to pass off as their own pearls of wisdom. I declined. It just seemed much too insincere on their part to be claiming to teach principles of a philosophy they didn't care about enough to even read.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(