Posted: Dec 17, 2017 1:01 pm
Right...well; I'll have a go at replying to your post Thommo, but TBH I find a lot of your language very ambiguous in this one so I'm struggling - probably my fault but you might have to explain a few things before we get to the bottom of it I think.
What do you mean by identifying a human behaviour? Like if you see someone cleaning dishes and you call it "washing up" that's identifying a human behaviour? If you are referring to the displacement example that is a theory which allows predictions.
No; sorry. I think it does both. I'm not advocating his stage theory of psychosexual development however at this juncture.
I wasn't lol (OT). I don't know what his explanation for that phenomenon was - and perhaps it is a failing of his that he failed to tie it in with Oedipus/Electra.
Thommo wrote:
Do you think that his identifying a human behaviour is the same as justification for his theories (note: a theory being an explanatory framework for the observations that allows prediction)?
What do you mean by identifying a human behaviour? Like if you see someone cleaning dishes and you call it "washing up" that's identifying a human behaviour? If you are referring to the displacement example that is a theory which allows predictions.
Let me give an example. Freud's theory of psychosexual development states that humans go through five phases: Oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital and that disorders (and also other conditions no longer considered disorders) develop as a result of over or under indulgence in these phases that leads to non standard processing of them. Do you understand that the retrospective fitting of his theories from the data rather than prediction of the data from the theories is hugely significant here?
No; sorry. I think it does both. I'm not advocating his stage theory of psychosexual development however at this juncture.
Nobody would deny that babies do explore their bodies and interact with the world in a largely sequential pattern. That is observation, and Freud was certainly a keen observer. The criticism and failure of Freud arises when it comes to Freud's explanation of the observations - of his theories. That pre-teen children are often apathetic regarding the opposite gender does not support Freud's explanation of why that is the case. Whilst he was among the first to systematise his reporting of this phenomena he abjectly failed to tie it in any real way to his elaborate mental constructs like the Oedipus and Electra complexes.
I wasn't lol (OT). I don't know what his explanation for that phenomenon was - and perhaps it is a failing of his that he failed to tie it in with Oedipus/Electra.