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Comment by orwin | Hacker News Reader

The reason Freud isn't mentioned is that he isn't relevant in modern psychology or psychiatry, except in French Canada, France, and Germany. Even if you believe (tm) in psychoanalysis, the modern approach do not follow Freud's teachings [0], not that it's that much better now. (btw I'm not objective on thatmy mother spent 25 years, a divorce, an estranged daughter and a lot of money on psychanalysts. At 23, i told her to see a real psychologist. After 2 session, she sent her to a hospital see a psychiatrist. Bam. Bipolarity, triggered by anti-inflammatory medecine. During 25 years of her life, she was half the time in manic phases, for days, and not a single charlatan detected it.)

[0] https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-...

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I have no opinions to share here on the practice of psychoanalysis, either in its historical or modern form. But it's undeniable that the discursive roots of modern psychology come from Freud in particular, and that when we analyze a phenomenon ("treatment" notwithstanding) we owe ourselves due diligence to understand it properly. The issue is, as I stated, a refusal at the level of legitimation of knowledge, which is ultimately a juridicial question when considered wrt the deployment of psychology to the masses.

To be clear, psychoanalysis is actually cited in the original essay: "Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg" are both quite well-known, although divisive figures. But Freud himself, who produced the theory with proper scope to interpret the claims, is not.

> But it's undeniable that the discursive roots of modern psychology come from Freud in particular, and that when we analyze a phenomenon ("treatment" notwithstanding) we owe ourselves due diligence to understand it properly.

Sure, and people analyzing the "discursive roots of modern psychology" - historians of science - do talk about Freud. And Wundt, and James, and Watson, all of whom are of comparable significance in the history of the field. But scientists are not historians; they're interested in analyzing the actual thing out there in the world, not the way we talk about it.

The "actual thing out there in the world", at least for the case of psychology, is discursively ("socially") constructed. This fact is the precise problem with the original essay, and with empirical psychology as a field -- it has no understanding of the actual thing it's studying. Dealing with narcissism through statistical surveys is like the blind men and the elephant.

Afaik, he is not relevant in Germany, but for some reason Americans tend to take him seriously.

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