Freudian Theory and Its Applicability

“Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea, they become powerless when they oppose it.” (Sigmund Freud) Yet, we still must ask ourselves what good is strength without truth. For things may be strong and false at the same time. Regardless, for Freud’s statement to be true, one must first know what a strong idea is when an idea is revealed. Who could be an accurate judge of the strength and truth of an idea then? A man regarded as intelligentsia, or perhaps a man considered wise by his peers. Yet, any man regarded as great by some, is regarded as simple by many, therefore, no one man could decide what a strong and truthful idea is, and thus we are presented with a dilemma.

Freud, in his day and in ours, was and is measured great by some and perhaps eccentric by others, yet, there is no doubt in the strength of his arguments, his ideas, for he was relentless in his appeals to the people that what he presented was true. In our society, however, truth is more often than not represented by scientific fact, thus for Freud’s statements, and theories, to be true, they must be scientifically factual. However, during Freud’s time, he did not have the technology to test such things, and even today we cannot measure the layers of a man’s conscious. Therefore, by any reasonable logic, we cannot judge his psychoanalytical methods to be accurate.

Science is defined as, “Knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method and concerned with the physical world and its phenomena.” Now, Freud did do testing, however, he did not eliminate all factors that are capable of altering his hypothesis, and did not explore all of the facets of what he himself had revealed in psychoanalytic understanding. It appears as though in all of his case studies he arrived at his conclusion through his own point of view, and this conclusion was most often times of the same genre.

Freud’s principles of ego, superego, and id are indubitably one of the most concise and simplistic ideas used in general psychology today, probably one of the most easily understood as well. However, it occurs to me that in Dora, not once did he include the base of her hysteria, id. Moreover, Freud did not mention the countering superego, or the conscious ego; he simply implied the conscious and subconscious without ever delving into them. It is with this that I consider the implication that his findings were incomplete, as before dream analysis he used hypnosis, both subconscious, nothing to do with conscious. However, something may be true without being complete. I will use an example: