It looks like a recent study that seemed to support Freud’s Oedipal theory slipped up, as it were.
In related news, it would be great if a Ben Stiller movie, starring Anne Meara, entitled Mother Focker had just been greenlighted. But it hasn’t, because I just made it up, which I guess says a lot about me.
Ha! Genius!
I’m not sure that’s what it says about me–but I appreciate the kind word.
I feel compelled to respond to this because I feel like in part you’re making this post because of my earlier comments.
So some people doing a study that would have given some tertiary support to one facet of Freud’s teachings had some incorrect data. It should be pointed out that looks are not the only thing that can remind someone of somebody, and also that even if people didn’t marry people like their parents (I had never heard of people doing that before this actually) it does not discredit the theory since finding a suitable mate is often difficult and people often take what they can get instead of their ideal.
If you’re looking for anti-Freud information there’s no shortage of it out there for a number of reasons. Primarily it’s because pharmaceutical companies have some of the highest marketing budgets of any companies, Eli Lilly alone spent $774.2 million on marketing in 2007. With that much money they could convince the world of anything they want. They don’t spend it all on traditional ads but also do things like influence textbooks and wage propaganda campaigns against people who argue an alternate way for curing mental illness besides drugs.
Besides Freud, Tom Cruise has also been a victim. Yes Tom Cruise is eccentric and a Scientologist but he’s always been that and people loved him. The media only started tearing him apart only after that debate with Matt Lauer, which if anyone actually listens to Cruise is very logical, calm, and wins that debate.
There are several genuine studies that have also been done which debunk the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness. You’ve seen PET scans I’m sure of people who are depressed or people who have anxiety disorders compared to a normal PET scan, and the pharmaceutical companies will point to that and say “see it’s all a chemical imbalance, you need our drugs to correct it.” But what they don’t tell you is that with just behavioral and psychological therapy you can change someones brain chemistry and over time an abnormal PET scan person will give normal PET scans without drugs. Why isn’t the media picking up on the PET scan deception, which seems much more concrete and intentional than this article which uses someone elses mistake to attack Freud?
a.) The main point of this entry is a joke.
b.) The corrupting influence of Big Pharma on medicine in this country–all medicine, not just the treatment of mental illness–is very real. That doesn’t mean people who are ill don’t need medication. What kind of medication, what works and what doesn’t, is an issue that should be addressed by scientists, not dogmatists.
Freud was one guy who had a few ideas a hundred years ago. If there has been no progress past his ideas in a century or more, if his ideas are not subject to debate, revision, testing, disproof, then it’s not science; it’s a kind of secularized religion (much like Scientology itself).
I did listen to Cruise talk to Lauer and I did not think he won the debate, if that’s what it was. I think Brooke Shields won the debate, candidly, and she wasn’t even there.
I wrote: “What kind of medication, what works and what doesn’t, is an issue that should be addressed by scientists, not dogmatists.”
I should have added: “Or corporate marketing departments.” The flood of advertising for prescription medications is deeply sickening and, I think, pernicious.