Posted: Mar 29, 2010 9:52 am
Mr.Samsa wrote:Agrippina wrote:Yes, I'm not proposing Freud as a valid theory, I just think that not teaching the theory to psych students even if just as history is a little like teaching people to paint without teaching them about art history.
Hmm.. I think a more apt analogy would be "It's like not teaching alchemy to chemistry students". Whilst I agree that people should have a strong grasp of the history in their field, this is more important in the sense of not making the same mistakes rather than needing it in order to to be good at what you do. A chemist could do their job successfully with absolutely zero knowledge of alchemy, in the same way a psychologist could do their job successfully with no knowledge of Freud or psychoanalysis.
I disagree with the analogy to the extent that ideas from alchemy aren't around anymore, while Freud's ideas are, so it's probably useful to know just what in our "common sense" about human psychology comes from Freud's work.