I would like to point out something that has enraged me for years and I would like to mention it explicitly. freud was an absolute scourge for psychology. His ideology (not theory) has plagued psychology. Remember a theory is testable freud’s ideas were not for the most part. Then some of the assertions he did make have been debunked for decades again and again through research. People say that if they could go back in time they would do away with hitler. I would do away with freud. After all hitler’s ideas are not followed and taught to this day like freud’s are. Yes true some people are “neo-nazis” and white supremacists and so on. However freud is still taught as a baseline way of thinking in psychology, counseling and clinical areas over 80 years after his death.  This is true even though behaviorism has debunked his ideology again and again.

Wilhelm Wundt is considered the true father of psychology having the first recognized experimental laboratory back in 1879. freud on the other hand did not believe in experimentation, and was even quoted as saying he did not think research was necessary for his ideas. What I have gleaned from psychoanalytic thought and ideology throughout the years of studying is it’s kind of like an umbrella. They pick and choose ideas that are actually evidence based from research. Yet psychoanalytic people attach superfluous vacuous meaning to well established experimental concepts and act as if there’s some “deeper meaning”. My assertion is its a vacuous meaning to the concept itself that is truly based on research. Meanwhile basic research in psychology shows that there doesn’t have to be any deeper magical mystical meaning to the concept. Everyone knows the concept of a freudian slip and a it is somehow linked to sex. Yet numerous studies in cognitive psychology have shown that we can predict how people make slips of the tongue, or they will think of a word based on what’s called a cognitive priming effect.

Freud is dead and his ideology should be as well. When I have taught freud in the classroom I use him as an exemplar for how psychology absolutely should NOT be conceptualized, practiced or taught. Psychology is a scientific field that needs to be recognized as such and not demeaned my vacuous ideologies like freud’s.