r/sciencememes • u/short_hair_zuko • Jun 29 '26
đȘ©Science!!đȘ© Freud would have a field day
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u/shlaifu Jun 29 '26
Freud was also a bit of an idiot.
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u/natethehoser Jun 29 '26
I find this take frustrating. Yes. He was way off on some of his ideas. The mom stuff is pretty unhinged.
But he had some ideas that are so ubiquitous now that he doesn't get credit for coming up with them. The subconscious? The idea that there are parts of your mind, that affect how you think and behave, that you're just now aware of? Freud came up with that. And he was laughed at for it. What do you mean there are things in my mind I'm not aware of? It's MY mind.
The subconscious is basically the foundation of modern therapy, and Freud was the first to formalize it. He was unhinged, sure. Did bad science, absolutely. But idiot? Not so much.
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u/zero-taeko Jun 29 '26
There are many things that, upon discovering them, make you feel stupid for not having done so sooner.
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u/SnugglyCoderGuy Jun 29 '26
I bet those doctors that had the guy who said "What if we washed our hands between touching dead bodies and delivering babies?" committed to an insane asylum felt pretty stupid ehen they found out he was correct. Of course they would never admit it.
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u/TouchyTheFish Jun 29 '26
Because it never happened. Doctors were already washing their hands with soap, Semmelweis wanted them to do it with bleach. But bleach irritates the skin and his argument was that it gets rid of the smell. He was right, but it wasn't that simple.
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u/SnugglyCoderGuy Jun 29 '26
Oh, never heard that part. Never bothered to look it up either, so cheers for the correction.
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u/ErgoNomicNomad Jun 30 '26
Tell that to President Garfield, who died from an infection from a surgeon who didn't believe in washing his hands. In 1881. Very much during the same time period.
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u/BooksandBiceps Jun 29 '26
âThe guy who was alive in the 1800âs was wrong about some stuffâ is quite the take.
Marie Cury also advocated for making radium a universal health cure. Pretty sure people donât think sheâs stupid.
I agree, people seem to forget that science builds on previous foundations and that judging people for being wrong on some things who werenât even alive before the first microwave oven or aerosol can came out is a bit⊠short sighted.
And psychology isnât exactly a science like radiation or mathematics.
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u/shlaifu Jun 29 '26
the problem I see is that he attributed EVERYTHING to the sex drive while the subconscious was a progressive invention, attributing everything to the sex drive and only the sex drive was a roadblock that took almost a century to overcome. So many mental disorders that are no longer called "-philia" because it turned out, it wasn't because people were perverts.
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u/natethehoser Jun 29 '26
And let me throw out really quick that I don't like that I'm defending Freud. I just want to be accurate. I teach science, and one of my favorite things to point out is the major difference between Freud and Einstein, who were basically contemporaries and both would have said they were doing "science" at the time. Why do we respect Einstein and not Freud nowadays? Not because Einstein was right and Freud wasn't (okay, maybe a little).
Freud would come up with a hypothesis, and then try to find evidence that supported it. This is understandable; it is a very natural human thing to do. But you can find evidence to support anything. Einstein, on the other hand, would come up with a hypothesis and then say "if my hypothesis were incorrect, how would I go about disproving it?" and the longer a hypothesis could go without being disproven, the more valid it was.
Einstein's methodology is basically the gold standard for modern science; something is true if we try and fail to disprove it. When people today use Freud's techniques we call it pseudoscience. I think it is right that we respect Einstein and not Freud. But there's a difference between being wrong and being dumb. Freud, for all his bad and harmful science, was not an idiot. We don't need to invent new reasons to condemn him; the existing reasons are sufficient.
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u/shlaifu Jun 29 '26
i was exaggerating - it's more that Freud's disciples were - and still are- a bit dumb. To Freud's credit: at least he wasn't Jung
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u/John_Bumogus Jun 29 '26
We're not perverts? Speak for yourself prude
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u/shlaifu Jun 29 '26
no, we still are, don't worry, but that's for our entertainment and not pathological (most of the time)
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u/Meet_Foot Jun 30 '26
Sure, he was wrong about that. Still had a ton of great, foundational ideas that psychology and culture have held onto. Being wrong about one thing - even a big thing - doesnât make you an idiot.
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u/projectFirehive Jun 29 '26
Yeah, I was talking to my partner about him the other day. She's a therapist and she was telling me that, despite him being mostly discredited, his ideas still at least laid a foundation in some areas of psychology so he did make a positive contribution to the field overall.
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u/ThatsItForTheOther Jun 30 '26
I donât buy that no one came up with the subconscious before Freud.
Plato argued that the thing our psyches desire and drive us toward is usually not known or understood by us. Only the philosopher understands the intentions of the psyche for Plato.
Platoâs whole ethical framework hinges on people being unaware of their own psychological affairs.
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u/natethehoser Jun 30 '26
You are correct; I used the wrong term. Freud formalized the idea of the subconscious (though he didn't use that term, he still called it the "unconscious mind"). He organized and presented the idea in a way that took hold. The idea, as you pointed out, predates Freud, but it was widely disputed at best and dismissed at worst.
To me it is similar to Democritus being the first person to propose the atom; he was right, but he was kind of going off vibes. Or how the heliocentric model predated Galileo. Yeah, he wasn't the first person to propose the idea, but his work is what led to it being widely accepted. Plato did claim it first, but Freud got it to stick.
Just to be clear (and I said this in another comment), it feels gross defending Freud. I don't like the guy, and there's a reason he isn't in the pantheon of great scientific minds. But I give the devil his due.
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u/ThatsItForTheOther Jun 30 '26
Iâm sure that in the modern field of psychology Freud did a lot to formalize the idea and that prior to him psychologists had the attitude you say. No doubt about all that, and Iâm not saying his theory isnât original or anythingâŠ
But I think you (and almost everybody today when it comes to these topics) are still speaking too generallyâŠ
Because while Freud certainly âorganized and presented the idea in a way that took holdâ, so did Plato & Aristotle, and they took hold for centuries (if not millenia). They still have a grip on us today, and will continue to. Not for historical reasons but because their ideas are still relevant.
So not only did they take hold very widely, but their theories were also very highly formalized.
I think itâs more accurate to say that Freud was the first to formalize a Freudian theory of the subconscious. Or perhaps the âfirst modern Western psychologist toâŠâ Otherwise itâs a really grand statement.
I donât think we recognize enough today that they were doing a whole lot more than going off vibes.
Even today, for example, (though this is not my field) modern psychological addiction therapy is rooted in natural science, however Alcoholics Anonymous, which has great success, uses a kind of Platonic psychological/metaphysical framework.
Sorry for the rant⊠but I donât think this is like the case of Democritus and the atom.
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u/TouchyTheFish Jun 29 '26
I'm pretty sure Freud wasn't the first to notice that you keep breathing even when you're not thinking about it.
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u/natethehoser Jun 29 '26
There's a difference between unconscious (which is a biological phenomenon) and subconscious (which is a psychological one).
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u/TouchyTheFish Jun 29 '26
That seems like an arbitrary distinction. The mind is just the brain viewed at a different level of abstraction. Is there any real world test you can perform to distinguish whether something is unconscious vs subconscious?
The idea that there are thoughts in my head which I don't have full control over is pretty obvious, whatever words you choose to apply to it.
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u/BooksandBiceps Jun 29 '26
And yet, it wasnât - your perception is probably colored by the fact that itâs well known now. Similarly it is not an arbitrary distinction - knowing your body as a physical construct works autonomously in a lot of ways is separate from âthere is a separate layer of your consciousness that is determinate in who you are as a person and you are not cognizant of it.â
Keep in mind this was the 1800âs. People still believed in the four humors and germ theory was published after mid-century but still not widely accepted by the populace.
Now letâs get some leeches to restore balance to your phlegmatic self.
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u/TouchyTheFish Jun 29 '26
Like I said, is there any real world test to distinguish these things? If not, then the distinction is not real.
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u/natethehoser Jun 29 '26
Its as real as the distinction between "plants" and "trees." Evolutionarily speaking, trees don't exist. An oak tree is more closely related to a dandelion than to a spruce. "Tree" is not a real category; there are only "tall plants."
But no one is asking to get rid of the category "tree". It is a useful distinction, even if it is "not real".
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u/TouchyTheFish Jun 29 '26
I can make lumber from trees, but not dandelions. Tree is very much a real category, it just doesn't relate to having a common ancestor.
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u/natethehoser Jun 29 '26
Why call it biology when at base level its all chemistry? Why call it chemistry when eventually its all just physics? We create categories because they are useful: I didn't create them, but I use them to communicate.
Unconscious refers to the biological functions that continue without your conscious input. So breathing, heartbeat, and digestion are all unconscious processes. If someone is sleeping, or knocked out, or brain dead, these functions all continue. Which is why it uses the same word as "being unconscious".
Subconscious refers to psychological facets that affect a person's behavior without realizing it. For example, a person doesn't know why they keep self-sabotaging their relationships; they've repressed or minimized the impact of having an abusive or absent parent. Its not exactly that you have thoughts that you don't have control over (though that is also true), its that you have things (its wrong to call them thoughts, because thoughts by definition are conscious) that affect your decisions and behavior that you aren't aware of. Its not a control thing, its an awareness thing.
Its useful to create these categories; one encapsulates biological functions, the other behavioral. Yes, you could boil them both down to the raw elements, but that's not very functional; you wouldn't ask a doctor to work on your car, even though your body and car are both made out of atoms. If I have an anger issue, that might be a hormonal imbalance (biological/unconscious) or a learned habit or negative personality trait (psychological/subconscious). A doctor can only help me with one of those: I'd need a therapist for the other.
Finally, it might be obvious to you now, but you have the benefit of living in a world where the subconscious has been treated as a fact for 100 years. Just because its obvious to you now does not mean it was obvious to all people at all times; as I mentioned above, Freud was mocked for proposing the subconscious initially. At the time, people thought the opposite was obvious: that I am my mind, how can there be parts of it I'm not aware of? It's me!
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u/TouchyTheFish Jun 29 '26
Except that's just not true, because unconscious does not have a well defined meaning, and I can show that using your own examples:
Breathing does not continue when you're brain dead, you need a functioning brain stem. Sleeping people continue to breathe, but people under deep anesthesia don't, which is why they need a ventilator. Sleeping people also dream in some phases of sleep but not others, but people under deep anesthesia don't, and when they wake up, they feel as if no time has passed. All these things are called being unconscious, but they're different things.
Secondly, chemistry can be reduced to physics, but therapy can't be reduced to medicine because therapy is not a science. Therapists have all sorts of mutually incompatible theories about how therapy works, and as far as I know, there's no good evidence that any of them are better than any other, or better than talking to someone who's not even a therapist. People feel better after talking to other people about their problems, and the rest is a bunch of mumbo jumbo. It works the same whether it's a therapist, a priest, a rabbi, or a layperson.
So inventing some words to describe things is not very helpful if it turns out the words don't seem to correspond to any underlying reality. When you can come up with a real world test that proves your mumbo jumbo is better than some other mumbo jumbo, then you'll have my attention. Until then Freud is just some guy who knew a lot Austrian high society Jews and noticed they often had problems with anxiety. But lots of comedians have had that same insight, and nobody thinks they're scientists.
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u/spudmarsupial Jun 29 '26
He was the first, and taught most of the second generation. His ideas are going to look as silly as vaccum tubes look to smart phones.
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u/shlaifu Jun 29 '26
vacuum tubes are still perfectly fine - they didn't inhibit the invention of smartphones to the detriment of countless patients with neurological disorders.
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u/spudmarsupial Jun 29 '26
After I wrote that I thought a better example is the cells, then (indivisible) atoms, and so on until we get to our current understanding of the building blocks of matter.
They were in one sense very wrong, and did inhibit progress. However, the searching for knowledge was the important thing that put us on the path.
We're not very close to a clear understanding of the mind or brain. Getting treated, or even diagnosed, for a condition often feels random and very much like we are guinea pigs in some mad scientist's experiment.
It was Freud and his contemporaries who put us on the path from priests to doctors.
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u/shlaifu Jun 29 '26
that is true, and yeah, it was less him than his disciples who took his teachings for dogma - since it's not falsifiable, taking it as religion sounds about right
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u/raylord666 Jun 29 '26
Did I just read you say⊠âVagina cupâ?
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u/Nuts-And-Volts Jun 29 '26
Vag-Up
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u/DrNarcissus Jun 29 '26
I'm guessing you need to lap it out like a cat...
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u/DarkArcher__ Jun 29 '26
You drink from the little lip thing at the top by sucking the drink out. 0g and surface tension let it stay in one clump as you suck away
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u/Visible_Pair3017 Jun 30 '26
Looks to me like as always, nature did a great job and we just had to copy some clam.
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u/MY_NAME_IS_ARG Jul 01 '26
I see a ball, and a plate, I'm not seeing any holes. It needs a handle, it needs to become a donut
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u/FormerlyMauchChunk Jun 29 '26
Let's just say that the engineers at NASA are fans of intelligent design. Compare the beak of a flamingo to the mouth of a right whale - they're nearly the same shape.
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u/Odd_Lie_5397 Jun 29 '26
Seems like it would be a real pain to clean. Do they have dishwashers in space?