Fanfic writer's guide to Psychology: Freudian slip ups
Whilst I was trying to come up with titles for this one, I have to admit toying with 'Why we don't listen to an opium-addicted sex obsessed 19th century loon anymore' but figured that was probably a bit long.
We had a seminar recently about writing for a non-academic audience, so hopefully the following attempt will be easier to digest than my previous, slightly stuffy attempt (which will be getting rewritten at some point). However I know I'm not too good at this, so any bits that are difficult to understand, please let me know.
I would love to say from now on I will be doing these sections once a week, but that would be an all-out lie. I will however promise to try. Eventually I shall have enough that I'll feel justified to moving them to their own blog and try plugging them to generate some sort of readership. At the moment though I shall stick to writing these as a rant outlet and intellectual exercise when I'm bored of doing literature searches.
Whilst watching TV you would be forgiven for thinking that all psychological theory is based on Freud's writings. We all know about the Oedipus Complex, even if the name is unfamiliar. For those wondering, it's the one which says you want to fuck your mother and kill your father. The rest of his theories weren't that much better and did generally revolve around an unhealthy fascination with sex and incest.
However, since the rise of behaviourism in the 60s, Freud has plummeted from grace in psychological circles. Indeed nowadays his theories are regarded with somewhere between shame and redicule by the majority of psychologists, and I suspect most would rather forget he even existed. Even Freudian theorists, or psychoanalysts as they prefer to be called now, have moved their theories so far away from the Austrian doctor's work that pretty much the only resemblance remaining is the strict refusal to present anything even vaguely resembling evidence to back up their theories.
So, to wander slightly off topic, why do psychologists, certainly research psychologists, have such an issue with Freud?
Well primarily because it's unscientific. Psychoanalytic theories, be they Freudian or otherwise, do not follow any of the basic criterion of a scientific theory. And in a time when, certainly in the UK, you have to search hard to find a psychology course offered as a BA as opposed to a BSc, you can see how this may be a problem. Psychoanalytic theories are not parsimonious, meaning they are not the simplest explanation for the phenomena. In fact, usually they're the most complex. They are not falsifiable, meaning that it's impossible to test how true the theories are. Or more to the point, it is impossible to prove that it's false since any piece of evidence can be twisted to support the theory. And these theories are generally based off anecdotal evidence from that psychologist's clinical practice. For example, Freud based all his work off a group of a dozen or so upper middle class women from late 19th Century Vienna, who's lives probably bear very little relation to yours or mine.
It's also wrong. Or more to the point, those elements which are testable, have been and have been consistently disproven. Indeed the only elements of Freud still present in modern psychological theory is the concept of subconscious processes. Which have been shown to exist, but in not in the way envisioned by Freud in his writings.
I'm not going to say Psychoanalysis no longer exists, it is unfortunatly alive and well. But it's influence is, for the most part, limited to psychotherapy. It is mainly concerned with uncovering unconscious or repressed conflicts or desires that are the root of the client's problems. Psychoanalytic therapy is generally a long-term prospect, with a minimum of 20-30 sessions and in many cases will last years. As such it's generally not used with severly mentally disturbed patients, such as severe depression or schizophrenia, despite what TV would have you believe.
This kinda brings me to my next criticism of psychoanalysis. It doesn't work. Because I'm a psychologist and thus like to sit on the fence I'll qualify that. As far as the current research evidence indicates, psychoanalytic therapies do not make patients any better of than they would be simply due to the passage of time. In fact, any improvement that does take place is due to elements you find in all therapies and counselling or you could even just get from talking to your friends.
So, I hear you cry, if Freud's a load of bollocks (I'm paraphrasing your cry here remember, these are not my words), what do psychologists think? Well there aren't really any unified theories, in the same way you'd get Feminism or Marxism in sociology. Pretty much all psychology nowadays can be placed under the cognitive-behavioural umbrella.
Cognitivism or cognitive-behavioural theories emerged from behaviourism. This was pretty much a reaction to Freud, it happened in the 60s and you've probably heard of two of it's most famous proponents: Skinner (and his boxes) and Pavlov (and his dogs). Behaviourism thought goes like this; we can't measure what's going on inside the brain, so let's treat it as a black box and concentrate on what we can measure, behaviour. A lot of it was based on conditioning. This being essentially that two things presented together will be associated in your brain. The classic example of this is dogs hearing a bell and salivating because they believe food is coming (this works well with humans too).
After a while, people starting going, 'this is all very well, but if we're really clever, we should be able to measure what people are thinking and feeling too'. Or at the very least draw some pretty good conclusions. This principle is what most modern psychology is based off. Though there are numerous different theories offering different interpretations of the evidence, this is because what is being studied is highly complex. As more research is done, more associations are drawn with neurobiology and genetic influences too. These theories are also applied to therapies and most clinical therapy programs nowadays are short, well-structured and evidence-based Cogntive-Behavioural therapies (CBT) than psychoanalysis. If nothing else, they're considerably cheaper.
As such, most psychological researches nowadays are more likely to talk about specific evidence, or evidence-backed theories relating to a particular research area, probably with some sort of biological basis in there, rather than grand over-arching, almost philosophical theories, with no real evidence other than what other theorists have said before them.
And most will never, ever, mention Freud.
We had a seminar recently about writing for a non-academic audience, so hopefully the following attempt will be easier to digest than my previous, slightly stuffy attempt (which will be getting rewritten at some point). However I know I'm not too good at this, so any bits that are difficult to understand, please let me know.
I would love to say from now on I will be doing these sections once a week, but that would be an all-out lie. I will however promise to try. Eventually I shall have enough that I'll feel justified to moving them to their own blog and try plugging them to generate some sort of readership. At the moment though I shall stick to writing these as a rant outlet and intellectual exercise when I'm bored of doing literature searches.
Whilst watching TV you would be forgiven for thinking that all psychological theory is based on Freud's writings. We all know about the Oedipus Complex, even if the name is unfamiliar. For those wondering, it's the one which says you want to fuck your mother and kill your father. The rest of his theories weren't that much better and did generally revolve around an unhealthy fascination with sex and incest.
However, since the rise of behaviourism in the 60s, Freud has plummeted from grace in psychological circles. Indeed nowadays his theories are regarded with somewhere between shame and redicule by the majority of psychologists, and I suspect most would rather forget he even existed. Even Freudian theorists, or psychoanalysts as they prefer to be called now, have moved their theories so far away from the Austrian doctor's work that pretty much the only resemblance remaining is the strict refusal to present anything even vaguely resembling evidence to back up their theories.
So, to wander slightly off topic, why do psychologists, certainly research psychologists, have such an issue with Freud?
Well primarily because it's unscientific. Psychoanalytic theories, be they Freudian or otherwise, do not follow any of the basic criterion of a scientific theory. And in a time when, certainly in the UK, you have to search hard to find a psychology course offered as a BA as opposed to a BSc, you can see how this may be a problem. Psychoanalytic theories are not parsimonious, meaning they are not the simplest explanation for the phenomena. In fact, usually they're the most complex. They are not falsifiable, meaning that it's impossible to test how true the theories are. Or more to the point, it is impossible to prove that it's false since any piece of evidence can be twisted to support the theory. And these theories are generally based off anecdotal evidence from that psychologist's clinical practice. For example, Freud based all his work off a group of a dozen or so upper middle class women from late 19th Century Vienna, who's lives probably bear very little relation to yours or mine.
It's also wrong. Or more to the point, those elements which are testable, have been and have been consistently disproven. Indeed the only elements of Freud still present in modern psychological theory is the concept of subconscious processes. Which have been shown to exist, but in not in the way envisioned by Freud in his writings.
I'm not going to say Psychoanalysis no longer exists, it is unfortunatly alive and well. But it's influence is, for the most part, limited to psychotherapy. It is mainly concerned with uncovering unconscious or repressed conflicts or desires that are the root of the client's problems. Psychoanalytic therapy is generally a long-term prospect, with a minimum of 20-30 sessions and in many cases will last years. As such it's generally not used with severly mentally disturbed patients, such as severe depression or schizophrenia, despite what TV would have you believe.
This kinda brings me to my next criticism of psychoanalysis. It doesn't work. Because I'm a psychologist and thus like to sit on the fence I'll qualify that. As far as the current research evidence indicates, psychoanalytic therapies do not make patients any better of than they would be simply due to the passage of time. In fact, any improvement that does take place is due to elements you find in all therapies and counselling or you could even just get from talking to your friends.
So, I hear you cry, if Freud's a load of bollocks (I'm paraphrasing your cry here remember, these are not my words), what do psychologists think? Well there aren't really any unified theories, in the same way you'd get Feminism or Marxism in sociology. Pretty much all psychology nowadays can be placed under the cognitive-behavioural umbrella.
Cognitivism or cognitive-behavioural theories emerged from behaviourism. This was pretty much a reaction to Freud, it happened in the 60s and you've probably heard of two of it's most famous proponents: Skinner (and his boxes) and Pavlov (and his dogs). Behaviourism thought goes like this; we can't measure what's going on inside the brain, so let's treat it as a black box and concentrate on what we can measure, behaviour. A lot of it was based on conditioning. This being essentially that two things presented together will be associated in your brain. The classic example of this is dogs hearing a bell and salivating because they believe food is coming (this works well with humans too).
After a while, people starting going, 'this is all very well, but if we're really clever, we should be able to measure what people are thinking and feeling too'. Or at the very least draw some pretty good conclusions. This principle is what most modern psychology is based off. Though there are numerous different theories offering different interpretations of the evidence, this is because what is being studied is highly complex. As more research is done, more associations are drawn with neurobiology and genetic influences too. These theories are also applied to therapies and most clinical therapy programs nowadays are short, well-structured and evidence-based Cogntive-Behavioural therapies (CBT) than psychoanalysis. If nothing else, they're considerably cheaper.
As such, most psychological researches nowadays are more likely to talk about specific evidence, or evidence-backed theories relating to a particular research area, probably with some sort of biological basis in there, rather than grand over-arching, almost philosophical theories, with no real evidence other than what other theorists have said before them.
And most will never, ever, mention Freud.