Most psychologists don’t care about Freud’s work outside of a historical sense and kinda hate him as a person. His work was quite literally used as an example of pseudoscience by Karl Popper.

And yet for some reason philosophers have an obsession with integrating his views into their work and artists keep using his views as inspiration and analyze existing works via the lens of psychoanalysis.

Why?

  • wuphysics87
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    7 months ago

    It’s a way of framing discourse, ideas, and concepts. In the most general sense, id, ego, and super ego descibe that which is fundamental and can not change, that which can change but is not known at hand, and that which is presently known and can be actively changed. Try applying this framework to current events and you’ll see why people still discuss it.

    Police brutality is a good example. What is fundamental to a police officer and drives them? What more maleable mindset does this create? What conscious decisions and actions does an officer take?

    Obviously, this framing doesn’t perfectly capture the issue, but it does set you on a structured path to addressing it. If having an authoritative personality is what drives a police officer, how might we instill a more positive mindset when they are on patrol? How can the actions of a police officer negate that mindset?

    And so on, but sometimes a cop is just a cop…