Thursday, October 04, 2018

Psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience


Frederick Crews, Follies of the Wise:

In a word, then, Freud had launched a pseudoscience-- that is, a nominally scientific enterprise that is so faulty at the core that it cannot afford to submit its hypotheses for unsparing peer review by the wider community, but must resort to provisos that forestall any possibility of refutation.. And despite some well-intentioned efforts at reform, a pseudoscience is what psychoanalysis has remained.
And this seems especially relevant today:

The potential for mass havoc from 'memory' - based accusations is thus no smaller today than it was in the seventeenth century. In fact, it is incomparably greater, thanks to the power of our sensation-seeking media to spread the illness instantaneously from one town or region to another.
Related:

Don’t confuse us with the facts

We owe Salem an apology

They trusted the experts


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