Even though he was fumbling in the dark, at least he was attempting to systematize behavioral phenomena instead of blindly keep on accepting any medieval concepts of “spiritual possession” or a vague catch-all vague term of “madness” that preceded him.
This all had to start somewhere, and any science isn’t born in any sort of perfect final form.
Another good example is how astronomy had to arise from astrology… which by the way was also used as part of the ancient, rusty toolkit to try and make sense of the mind.
Even astronomy post-Copernicus and Newton has gone through its’ false starts and dead ends:
Canals on Mars.
The Milky Way as the entire universe.
The Steady State Universe.
The list goes on…
Even now, we are fumbling to make sense of the data captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, because what is being seen does not fit predictions made by carefully crafted cosmology theories of galaxy formation and maybe the age of the universe.
Psychology is no different. Limited tools and data sets give limited snapshots of reality, but that also doesn’t mean they are useless, and the good thing is that we have moved away from pointing the finger at astrology, witchcraft, “God’s will” and all that.
The only real problem with Freud is people treating his theories like gospel, which thankfully seems to have diminished quite a lot at this point, but it does sometimes feel like the importance of those theories on the pathway to our current understanding gets dismissed or ignored
Even though he was fumbling in the dark, at least he was attempting to systematize behavioral phenomena instead of blindly keep on accepting any medieval concepts of “spiritual possession” or a vague catch-all vague term of “madness” that preceded him.
This all had to start somewhere, and any science isn’t born in any sort of perfect final form.
Another good example is how astronomy had to arise from astrology… which by the way was also used as part of the ancient, rusty toolkit to try and make sense of the mind.
Even astronomy post-Copernicus and Newton has gone through its’ false starts and dead ends:
Canals on Mars.
The Milky Way as the entire universe.
The Steady State Universe.
The list goes on…
Even now, we are fumbling to make sense of the data captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, because what is being seen does not fit predictions made by carefully crafted cosmology theories of galaxy formation and maybe the age of the universe.
Psychology is no different. Limited tools and data sets give limited snapshots of reality, but that also doesn’t mean they are useless, and the good thing is that we have moved away from pointing the finger at astrology, witchcraft, “God’s will” and all that.
This
The only real problem with Freud is people treating his theories like gospel, which thankfully seems to have diminished quite a lot at this point, but it does sometimes feel like the importance of those theories on the pathway to our current understanding gets dismissed or ignored
Yeah many people did that too and were killed or obscured