I did listen to the memory hole podcast and I thought it was very interesting but I felt it was flawed in its critique of Freud. The critique was based on work that Freud did early in his career, and later moved away from. It also assumes that he somehow intended to set up the world of psychoanalysis as it is now when he undertook his ea…
I did listen to the memory hole podcast and I thought it was very interesting but I felt it was flawed in its critique of Freud. The critique was based on work that Freud did early in his career, and later moved away from. It also assumes that he somehow intended to set up the world of psychoanalysis as it is now when he undertook his earliest work. They seem to take some Freudian terms at face value - a common misreading of Freud - and fail to account for the development of wider field of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis and how it was disseminated in popular culture in the 20th century. I think the underlying point -that a misreading of psychoanalysis seeded a fantasy that quickly became a collective fantasy through social contagion - stands but it seems that it could be counterproductive to blame it entirely on Freud as they seem to do, and underplay other elements such as the marketing practices of companies selling products like self help books.
I did listen to the memory hole podcast and I thought it was very interesting but I felt it was flawed in its critique of Freud. The critique was based on work that Freud did early in his career, and later moved away from. It also assumes that he somehow intended to set up the world of psychoanalysis as it is now when he undertook his earliest work. They seem to take some Freudian terms at face value - a common misreading of Freud - and fail to account for the development of wider field of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis and how it was disseminated in popular culture in the 20th century. I think the underlying point -that a misreading of psychoanalysis seeded a fantasy that quickly became a collective fantasy through social contagion - stands but it seems that it could be counterproductive to blame it entirely on Freud as they seem to do, and underplay other elements such as the marketing practices of companies selling products like self help books.