Talk:Freud, Biologist of the Mind

Latest comment: 9 years ago by PaulBustion88

"It has been credited with being the key work that discredited psychoanalysis as science." I think that distinction would go to Hans Eysenck's Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire. I think the main point of Sulloway's book is demonstrating that Freud was not really that original a thinker and took ideas from others, not discrediting his scientific theories. He does not go as far in the book as Eysenck did, Eysenck said that all of Freud's ideas were false and that psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in general were useless. I don't think Sulloway went that far in his criticism of Freud.--PaulBustion88 (talk) 20:13, 11 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

Respectfully, it's not really relevant what you think unless you have a reliable source that backs up your position. I happen to be reasonably familiar with the critical literature on Freud and psychoanalysis, and although Eysenck is a well-known critic of Freud, he certainly isn't the most important one. The views you ascribe to Eysenck are actually commonplace observations; any number of people have said such things. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:50, 12 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Personally, I am very much opposed to psychoanalysis, but playing devil's advocate, is it perhaps a violation of NPOV to say in the article that psychoanalysis has been "discredited as a science"? There are some medical doctors who still claim to believe in it and use it, although its probably a fringe position at this point. --PaulBustion88 (talk) 03:43, 12 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
You can be opposed to whatever you like, but Wikipedia is not a forum, and we aren't here to debate our personal views of psychoanalysis or anything else. The material in the lead doesn't imply that psychoanalysis has been discredited as science, only that some critics have taken that view. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:47, 12 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Ok, I was not saying I was going to use wikipedia as a forum, I was just making clear I was not defending psychoanalysis in any way. --PaulBustion88 (talk) 03:50, 12 April 2015 (UTC)Reply