Freud = My Grandmother

The relationship between modern psychology professionals and Sigmund Freud is a lot like how I relate to my racist grandmother. Don’t get me wrong, I’m indebted to my Grandmother. If she didn’t do what she did with her life, then I would not exist. There’s no question about that. But I really wish people wouldn’t listen to her when she speaks in public.

She goes on these rants that make no sense. It’s embarrassing and not an accurate reflection of my views at all.Likewise, modern Psychologists are somewhat indebted to Freud. He made a lot of noise and put psychology on the map with the help of other like-minded psychoanalysts (note: they were not psychologists).

However, all of his hypotheses (he never accumulated enough data to actually make theories) were hogwash. Free Association? Sorry, I’d rather talk about what is relevant and not waste decades of both our lives. Penis Envy? Women didn’t envy men’s members; they envied men’s socioeconomic power and protection under the law. Oedipus Complex? We’re not repressing it. We just don’t want to have sex with our mothers.

What makes this worse, though, is the overwhelming amount of attention his ideas receive in other disciplines and in popular culture. From what I can tell, most people are only introduced to psychology through freshman-level courses or through the media. Proper introductions to psychology tend to spend a healthy quantity of time on history, giving Freud an undeserved amount of the public eye’s attention span. But I may be wrong. Freud may have just created easy to remember misconceptions about human behavior.


Psychology is a science. Teams of scientists throughout the world dedicate their lives testing any hypothesis produced about human behavior. Additionally, psychology has a large, public field of practitioners who help people replace self-destructive behavior patterns and cognitive fallacies with constructive behaviors/thought patterns.

Freud’s unethical treatment of patients and his disregard for the scientific method has rooted into the public consciousness. And it annoys me to no end. I am frequently amazed by good friends of mine who, knowing that I am a psychology major and that I plan on dedicating my career to the study of human behavior, still repeat these public misnomers to me.

1. Ever read a book or watched a TV show where a psychologist falls in love with/seduces a client? I have. Any Psychologist who did that in real life would no longer be a Psychologist, they would be a highly educated yet unemployable bum (“Psychologist” is a legally protected term, those who demonstrate unethical conduct lose that status). But it is a common narrative cliché found all throughout popular culture.

I think this cliché is tied indirectly to the unethical behavior Freud had with his patients. Freud (and his peers) made a lot of noise. Unfortunately, that was all it was: useless, meaningless noise. Freud was obsessed with sex and aggression, which skewed any findings he could have had. Just to make it clear, I am not obsessed with sex and aggression. But I probably would be if I smoked as much cocaine as Freud did!

2. How about the idea that a Psychologist is a paid best friend, there for you to listen to you complain? I have met too many with this misconception, and I am sick of it. Psychologists are trained professionals. They are not advocates. There is a difference between a person conducting a therapy session and a person you go to the mall with.

3. Also, one thing I hear often (usually by those who did not put in the time and effort to finish a Bachelor’s) is that if they had continued their education, they would have gone with psychology. What?! What makes you think that you, who did not have enough patience and discipline to finish a Bachelor’s degree, would be in any way qualified to be a Psychologist? It is currently easier to be accepted into medical school than to be accepted by graduate programs in clinical psychology.


I want to repeat that: One is more likely to be accepted into med school than in graduate level clinical psychology programs (which is a prerequisite for any type of practice, or to receive the legally protected status of “Psychologist”). This is not a field for the short-minded or the unfocused. If you could not drag yourself into class, or could not self-regulate your study habits/job performance, then psychology probably is not a good fit.

So if we are hanging out and you mention Free Association, Oedipus Complexes, Freudian Slips, or the idea that a Psychologist is your friend who will sleep with you because she/he did not work that hard to obtain her/his status, please apologize for the insult you just gave my chosen field. Unless these misconceptions are used in the context of a joke that specifically points out that they are erroneous, then their use is unforgivable.


For Your Information: In my introductory Developmental Psychology course last semester, we spent a total of three minutes discussing the ideas put forth by psychoanalysts. For the first minute, my professor pointed out their ideas about puberty/adolescence as a time of “storm and stress.” For the next two minutes we discussed how stupid, wrong, irrelevant, and non-productive those views are. And then we moved on, never to mention the word “Freud” again.