Freud’s Ideas Scientific Arguments

Objectivity is a quality that Freud’s ideas lack. The theories are rather subjective, therefore are sometimes just assumed to be true due to the fact that it seems to make sense. The theory cannot be empirically proven with the use of experiments, therefore the usefulness of the can be argued.

A scientific method requires that the experiment or research to be replicable so therefore can be carried out again with similar results. The psychodynamic methodology does not involve scientific experiments as much of Freud’s research was based on case studies, therefore any findings cannot be generalised to the whole population as individual differences occur. Also with methods such as free association, in which he used as a method of gaining information supposedly from the unconscious, the results are likely to be different each time.

The fact that it is not falsifiable is another issue. Freud’s notion of the Id, ego and superego (Martin, Carlson and Buskist, 2007 p.666-670) proposes the fact that an individual engages in defence mechanisms in order to hide their unconscious feelings. Therefore if Freud was to theorise a reason behind why an individual behaved the way the did and it was believed by the patient, then his method seemed to have worked, however if his ideas are believed wrong, for example the Oedipus complex as a part of the psychosexual stages, then the psychodynamic view would suggest that the individual was engaging in defence mechanisms, and in fact the theory is still correct.

However, even though, Freud’s ideas may not be scientific, they have seemed to be successful. In the case of Anna O, (Cohen 2005, p5), Freud used the method of catharsis in order to get Anna to express her feelings of early childhood. This enabled Anna to release any feelings from her unconscious and bring them o a conscious level in order to deal with them, this in turn cured her hysteria. Freud’s psychodynamic view is also good for explaining irrational fears, as it suggests that the underlying phobia of a subject is associated with an object or situation which seems irrational.

In conclusion, it can be argued that the ideas of Freud and the psychodynamic approach are in fact a Pseudoscience, stating that any theory is in fact posing as a science in order to be recognised and established but in fact is not. Much of Freud’s work is discredited as a formal way of viewing patients and establishing the root cause of a problem however for the patients that get positive results from this non scientific method, it does not seem to matter.s.