Freudian Fraud

Freudian Fraud

About three weeks ago, a professor invited me to her son’s wedding in Kajang in the state of Selangor. When I decided it was time to go home, it was already twelve midnight. At that time, it was no longer possible to get a taxi to take me home because the house is tucked in the highbrow areas of the farthest part of the city.

So one of the professor’s sons – Usman - was asked to take me home. With Usman were two of his postgraduate students from Petronas University. After first expressing their ‘wow’ as people usually do when they learn that your study is in psychology, Usman and his friends engaged me in a discussion about the human behaviour. And I was actually impressed by the breadth of their knowledge in behavioral sciences.

They asked me what I thought of Freud. I said Freud was a fraud. They said that they agreed with Freud ‘because one has to find a way to express his sexual desires.’ I explained to them that if they take Edmund Freud’s psychosexual theory and his studies in general in to consideration, they’ll agree with me that Freud wasn’t a hero some people take him to be. They challenged me to enlighten them.

What I told my friends that night is what I’m about to tell you today. But to enjoy reading it, you may want to don your best sense of disgust. The first reason why I advised you to that is because Freud’s thoughts have a way of offending people; especially if you’re a parent. Secondly you’ll not be the first person to do that; some psychologists regard Freud with contempt beginning by some of his own students. Thirdly, I desire for you to understand his ideas as clearly as possible. And to facilitate that understanding, I will not coat Freud’s thoughts in nice words; I’ll disrobe them as far as decorum allows.

The first example: Freud argued that when a baby sucks his mother’s breasts, he’s not only doing so to satisfy his hunger but that the child is also sexually engaged with those breasts. In other words, the child is sort of making love to the mother.

If you were shocked by that, don’t worry. There are more appalling details ahead.
What I’ve just described is what Freud called the oral stage. It starts from birth to age one. According to him, the oral and other stages I’ll soon describe, are not just phases in a child’s life but they shape the personality of the child in adulthood. For example if what the child can put in his mouth is restricted by the society, the consequence will be a fixation. Fixation is a situation where an individual becomes stuck in a conflict because his sexual urges and the demand for conformity by the society are not resolved. Over-dependence on others, passiveness, an unenterprising adulthood, smoking, sucking of fingers are all manifestations of oral fixation.

The next stage in Freud’s psychosexual theory is the anal stage. This stage occurs in children from age one to two. This is the time that a child starts gaining control over his bowel movement. Freud said that a child derives pleasure from controlling these actions. However, if a child is prevented from painting the house with his faeces and is subjected to rigid toilet training, conflict may result. Because of this conflict, fixation in adulthood will take the form of excessive cleanliness.

In 1910 in an article titled ‘A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men’ Freud introduced the Oedipus complex. Another name for this term is phallic stage. This stage is characterized by a child developing intense sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and a jealous hatred for the same-sex parent. Let me clarify this. Freud said the five year-old boy wants the mother and sees the father as a competition. In the case of a girl, she desires the father and is jealous of the mother.

Freud asserted the universality of this complex in 1920 in a note he added to his book ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’. In the note he said: “Every new arrival on this planet is faced with the task of mastering the Oedipus complex.”

But Andrew Colman was right: “He never fully clarified his views regarding the nature of the complex in girls.”

Rather, Freud contradicted himself in 1931 when he published the article titled ‘Female Sexuality’. He wrote: “It is only in the male child that we find the fateful combination of love for one parent and simutaneous hatred for the other as a rival.”

From age six to thirteen, children enter the latency stage. (Fortunately), Freud said any sexual impulses are pushed to the background because the child is busy learning cognitive and social skills.

Finally in adolescence, the sexual desires resurface again. The child enters the genital phase and the focus is on the pleasures of sexual intercourse.

Psychosexual theory is only one of Freud’s numerous theories (or Freud’s ideas where they’re not testable). Have you heard of Freudian slip? It’s a term people use to refer to one Freud’s ideas on unconciousness. For instance if you’re attracted to your female colleague and in trying to comment on her competence to a third person and say: “She is the breast person I’ve ever worked with” Freud said what actually happened wasn’t a mistake but your unconciousness that’s doing the talking.

A final note on Freud
Do not be offended if Freud viewed your sweet baby as a randy scoundrel; although his ideas inspired research in areas of human sexuality, unconciousness and development, few psychologists regard him with respect.

Romero and Kemp commented: “ Freud’s theory of personality development did not lend itself to scientific investigation. His work on personality is descriptive. This means that his theory is not testable using the scientific method.”

Despite his untestable theories, Freud was not overburden with humility. Wade and Tavris commented on how he saw himself and how others see him: “ Freud saw himself as one of the great geniuses of history, and many people agree with that assessment. But many modern scientists think he was a flat-out fraud whose ideas have not stood the test of time.” Medawar called him “ a dinasour in the history of ideas”.